It's Just a Ride
by Speals
Summary: Yang Xiao Long wants to live her life to the fullest, while Blake Belladonna wants to forget the life she knew and build a new one in its place. A chronicle of the romantic and emotional turbulence the students of Beacon face as they blossom into adolescence and learn to face the evils of the world.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Yang Xiao Long heaved a sigh that she was hesitant to label as one of relief as she and her friends took their first steps onto the grounds of Beacon academy. She wondered if she should feel bad for ditching Ruby the moment the airship had touched down. Ruby was, after all, two years younger than anyone else here, in addition to having all the normal freshman problems like getting lost in an unfamiliar environment, but getting her little sister to socialize had never been easy anyway. If Ruby was going to use Yang as a crutch for the next four years, she'd never grow up. Catapulting her, sometimes literally, out of her comfort zone and into the real world would do her some good. That was the principle Yang had used to teach her to swim, and that had turned out fine.

Yang let herself smile and forget her worry. She was at Beacon now, and all her friends were walking at her side. Well, not all her friends, of course. She had known everybody at Signal, even the janitors, but if she were forced to sit for lunch on a single picnic blanket, these four were the ones she would choose to populate it.

At her right was Soren Glaux, the only boy in the group. He had chin-length brown hair and a narrow face, narrow everything really. Yang had never found another boy her age as easy to lift off the ground, which was made all the funnier by the fact that he was four inches taller than she was. He was dressed in jeans and his favorite shirt: a white tee with a large black owl with spread wings emblazoned like a medieval family crest across the front, and the leather jacket she'd given him as a birthday present last year.

At his right was Liseran Currant, the tallest girl Yang had ever met. She had two inches on Soren and had shoulders broad enough for Yang to sit comfortably on. People at Signal had called her Amazon for her figure, a result of having grown up on her parent's farm Yang had no doubt, but aside from that, the only evidence of her rustic upbringing was her penchant for plaid, flannel shirts, and even those she normally wore open over a midriff-baring tank top, as she was currently. She had blonde hair nearly as long as Yang's, but whereas Yang's was blessed with feathery waves and was the color of spun gold, Liz's was straight as straw and had the color to match, though Yang could attest that it was as soft as her own.

At Yang's left was Briseis Hippodameia. If Ruby were to discover that she had a long lost twin sister, Yang's first suspect would be Brie, even though the two looked nothing alike. Brie was about the same height as Ruby, but the similarities ended there. Brie's hair was a vibrant brown and so curly that Yang couldn't imagine her capable of using hair products that didn't have the words 'industrial strength' printed on the bottle. She had the brightest blue eyes that Yang had ever encountered, and the same could be said of her smile. She was as excitable as Ruby, which Yang supposed was the only personality trait they shared. The comparison really wasn't fair, she supposed. Brie was the most innocent child Yang could imagine, in spite of Liz and Yang's own self-proclaimed corrupting influences, whereas Ruby was only mostly innocent, just with a weapon fetish that bordered on the erotic.

The last member was Artemisia Wormwood. Looking at her, you'd think she never left the library, with her forehead-concealing bangs and thick glasses, but Yang never got tired of watching boys, who thought she was shy and studious, attempt to flirt with her, only to be confronted by the veritable force of sarcasm and cynicism that was Art. If fucking with people were a sport, Art would be an Olympic medalist. She had gotten people detention and worse back at Signal, and though her victims usually deserved it, Yang had to shudder at what Art could accomplish if she used her power for evil.

The five of them passed through a set of double doors into the school library, causing them to pause and take in the sight. Yang wasn't much of a reader, not since Ruby had grown up enough to read books for herself, but even she had to marvel at the size of the place. Most of it was probably full of textbooks that would put her to sleep, but she did see a fairly extensive fiction section she could probably get some mileage out of, provided her classwork didn't take up too much of her time.

"Did you guys hear that Pyrrha Nikos is coming here?" Briseis chimed. "Ooh, I hope I get assigned to the same team as her!"

"It's all you've talked about today," Artemisia grumbled.

"That's not true!" Briseis said, face turning red. "We talked about the view on the flight over, Liz talked about going drinking…"

"Liz talking about booze is practically background noise at this point. It doesn't count."

Liseran didn't dignify Artemisia's jab with a response, instead saying, "I know this Nikos chick's been on magazine covers and cereal boxes, but what's the big deal about her?"

Yang had to step back as Briseis whirled on Liseran with an expression on her face that most people reserved for religious blasphemers. "She's the best warrior of this generation, Liz! She's won every tournament she's ever been in!"

"I'm starting to smell a fangirl," Yang said, jabbing her elbow into Briseis's side.

Briseis turned away with an indignant huff. "I just appreciate seeing someone who works as hard as she can while still possessing natural talent. I bet she could even beat you, Yang."

"Not a chance," Yang said, grinning and flexing her bicep. "Don't forget, I've never lost a fight either."

"That's because your Semblance cheats for you," Liseran said with a smirk. "How fair is it for your opponent to get punished for beating you?"

"It's not punishing them for beating me," Yang said, winking and punching her palm. "It's punishment for thinking they could."

"Well, now we know what all that hair is for," Artemisia said. "It's to hide that swelled head of yours."

"Gotta admit," Soren interjected, "there's no telling the kind of students we'll find here. It won't be like Signal. People from all over the world come here, the best of the best."

"Well then, that makes us the best too," Yang said.

"What a distressing thought," Soren muttered.

They explored the campus for another hour, scouting out the locations of their dorms, the cafeteria, and the classrooms, before they decided to group up at the auditorium, where the headmaster was going to be delivering a speech for the incoming freshmen.

"I suppose we should ask for directions," Soren said as they came to a stop in the middle of a courtyard.

Yang peered around for anyone who looked like a local. There were a few groups of obvious newbies, who were still carrying luggage, but there was a Faunus girl with a camera sitting on a bench nearby, snapping pictures of the newcomers. Most likely a tourist, but she was the only possibility in sight. Yang motioned for her friends to follow her as she waded through the crowd.

The Faunus girl had tawny hair and rabbit ears that perked up every time she was about to take a picture. She was so engrossed in her photography that she didn't notice their approach.

"Hellooo!" Yang called, waving.

The Faunus girl looked up from her view finder. She put on a shy smile and lifted her arm to give them a little wave. "Hi," she said. She had one of the cutest accents Yang had ever heard.

Yang extended a hand to the girl. "I'm Yang," she said.

The Faunus girl took it. In spite of her demure expression, her grip was firm. "Velvet," she said. "Pleased to meet you."

"My friends and I are just moving in. Any chance you could point us towards the main hall?"

"Oh, that's easy. Just head back to the lobby, and it's straight across from the front door. Would you like a map?" She reached into her camera bag and withdrew a folded sheet of cardstock titled, Beginners Guide to Beacon.

"Thanks," Yang said as she took the pamphlet.

"They really should have handed these out when we get dropped off," Briseis mumbled.

"Headmaster Ozpin's says it's to encourage exploration and interaction between new students and old ones," Velvet said. "But, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just to save school funds. I thought some people might need them though, so I printed off a few myself."

"So, I guess you're a student here?" Yang asked.

"I'm a second year. I can still remember what it felt like being the new student though, so if any of you are worried, you can relax. Beacon is challenging, but it's also a really great place. My teammates are my best friends now, so—just don't be worried, I guess."

She chuckled awkwardly. Yang thought she was cute. "Well, thanks, Velvet," Yang said. "See you around."

"Goodbye," Velvet said with something resembling a seated curtsy.

"Hey, Yang," Liseran said as soon as the conversation had ended. "You want to head back to town to make a beer run after the assembly? There's not much else to do until lights out this evening."

"Oh," Velvet interjected, "I'm sorry, but you won't be able to get anything."

Liz smirked. "Yang and I know a guy who doesn't require ID, so don't worry about that."

"No, I mean you can't go back into town right now. To make sure they have enough space for all the students, the air ships aren't taking anyone away from the school except in emergency cases. It's a one way trip until tomorrow."

A wine grape couldn't have looked more crushed than Liseran did. "You're kidding."

"Sorry. Most of the teachers on campus are pretty lenient about alcohol though, so you can get all you want after tomorrow. Just don't let Professor Goodwitch catch you with it."

"Yeah, thanks," Liz said, though she didn't sound thankful, too busy gritting her teeth and giving a death glare to nothing in particular.

"Hey," Yang said, smiling as she nudging the taller girl, "there are other ways we can commemorate our first night at Beacon."

Artemisia rolled her eyes, and Briseis's face flushed. Liseran just sighed, "Not as fun without booze, but fine."

"You saying I require beer goggles?" Yang teased, crossing her arms in mock outrage.

"Not you I'm worried about," she said, giving Yang a soft jab on the shoulder.

They said goodbye to Velvet once more before heading back inside towards the assembly hall.

#

Blake Belladonna stood amongst the crowd inside the assembly hall, doing her best not to draw attention to herself. A few people attempted to rope her into a conversation, but she turned them all away as delicately as she could. Her stomach was in knots, though she had perfected the art of concealing her concern. It had been an eventful few hours since her feet had touched the cobble grounds of Beacon. She had run into the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, seen a girl explode, and toured the school that was going to be her home for the next four years. She hadn't encountered many other Faunus, but she supposed that seeing any at all was a blessing on some level. Then again, if representatives of a company as anti-Faunus as the SDC were also here, then there was no telling whether the environment here would be accepting or not.

She breathed a sigh. How long had it been since she had been out in the world, rather than shifting from hideout to hideout? Probably not since the White Fang's change in management. Just thinking about them, about Adam, made her want to shiver, but she repressed the urge. That was all behind her now, and she would tell herself that every day until she finally felt it had come true.

Not wanting to speak with anyone else, and seeing that the headmaster had yet to appear to address them, Blake took her earbuds from her pocket, plugged them into her Scroll, and turned on an album by Katatonia. She could still hear the room fine, due to her secondary ears hidden beneath her hair bow, but she closed her eyes and did her best to tune out the sounds around her and slip away with the music. She mouthed along to the lyrics:

 _"…Revolve inside,_

 _My blood is yours too._

 _That's what you say._

 _It couldn't be further from the truth._

 _I find the soul in medication._

 _All my loving has turned and washed away…"_

Perhaps she had picked too poignant a song for forgetting about Adam. Her finger was moving to skip to the next song when a female voice rang out through the crowd. Blake had to fight not to let her cat ear's twitch at the sudden noise. She turned her head to see a tall blonde waving a muscled arm over her head. Her jumping up and down was causing her large breasts to bounce, earning the attention of most of the boys standing near her.

"Ruby! Over here! I saved you a spot!" she was shouting.

She was joined moments afterwards by the girl in the red hood that Blake had met earlier. The one who had exploded. She seemed no worse for wear, which was nice. Didn't want Schnee coming out on the better end of that exchange. Speaking of Schnee, she spotted the heiress marching straight for the other two girls with a look on her face that suggested the earlier incident had not been forgiven.

Their words grew too quiet for Blake to hear over the general chatter, but she kept watching if only to pass the time. The moment the girl in red, Ruby, realized Schnee was standing behind her, she leapt straight into the busty blonde's arms. Blake felt a pang of sympathy. The girl looked so young and fragile, and even though earlier had clearly been an accident, Blake could see that Schnee was laying into her pretty hard, going so far as to hand her a pamphlet about Dust safety.

The busty blonde stepped in and seemed to be trying to talk them both down. Ruby nodded along, extending her hand to Schnee in a gesture of peace, but Schnee didn't seem to be having any of it. There were four others, one boy and three girls, standing next to them, friends of Ruby and the blonde by the look of it. All of them were glaring at the young heiress, looking ready to go to war.

 _That_ , Blake thought. _That is how I feel right now_. Nice to know that there were at least a few humans she had solidarity with, if only in that the name Schnee put a bad taste in their mouths.

Her thoughts were interrupted as a series of thumps from the loudspeakers announced that Ozpin was ready to speak. She looked back at the stage to see the headmaster standing at the microphone, the professor she had seen on the flight over, Goodwitch, standing beside him. She silenced her music just as the line "I see, you don't want liberation…" finished playing.

"I'll—keep this brief," he began, his voice dimming the clamor of the room. "You have traveled here today in search of knowledge, to hone your craft and acquire new skills, and when you have finished, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people. But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy, in need of purpose, direction."

Blake had to agree with that one. She doubted many here had matched her feat of being accepted to Beacon without having first been through one of the lesser combat schools around the world, and her initial impression of most of the students around her was that they wouldn't make the cut. She only hoped they were weeded out in combat practice before they were sent off and got eaten by a Beowolf.

"You assume knowledge will free you of this," Ozpin continued, "but your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you to take the first step."

Not quite the speech she had expected, but one Blake agreed with wholeheartedly. Knowledge was nothing without action. It was no different than all those who claimed to support Faunus equality but were ever absent from each rally and protest. That was something Schnee would never understand, and, if Blake were lucky, maybe the heiress would prove herself equally unfamiliar with real combat and be sent home before a semester was out.

Goodwitch was saying something about spending the night in the ballroom until initiation and room assignment the next day, but Blake turned her music back on and slipped out through the crowd to beat the exit rush.


	2. Chapter 2

[ _Author's Note: Did I mention there would be lemons? Because there's going to be a lot of those, this chapter included. For the more literary minded, don't worry, I'll still be focusing on the character's emotional connections, and most of the smuttier scenes will still serve a purpose with the plot. If you don't like graphic sex scenes, however, now would be the time to leave. Hope you enjoy._ ]

Chapter 2

Blake wondered what she'd done to deserve a day like this. Being a terrorist probably accounted for a great deal of bad karma, but she was doing her best to atone for that without having some cosmic force going out of its way to annoy her. All she'd done was make one snappy comment at the Schnee heiress, and one that the little bitch most likely deserved, but somehow that meant Blake was now a part of her and Ruby's ongoing drama.

It had started when she had tried to read before going to bed that night. That simple pleasure was swiftly denied her when the busty blonde from earlier, who had introduced herself as Yang, had dragged her sister Ruby over and started trying to make friends. That had left Blake somewhat annoyed. It had gotten better though after Ruby had started talking about books, and she did see that Yang was just trying to help her sister acclimate to her new surroundings. Then Schnee had showed up again like an unwelcome rainy day, and while Blake might normally have championed her cause of getting everyone to quiet down, she was now too ill-disposed toward Schnee to be on her side, especially when it came as an interruption to her first pleasant conversation of the day.

The three had started arguing, creating more noise than there had ever been to start with, and they had continued until Blake had blown out her candles and the professors turned out the lights for the night. Schnee was thankfully sleeping on the opposite side of the room, and Ruby and Yang, while not far, were at least at a distance that rendered any attempts at whispered words impossible. She had valued the silence just long enough for her to realize that she was still too anxious to rest. She sighed and decided to wait until the people around her had fallen asleep before going for her book again. Her cat's eyes made even the dim moonlight streaming through the windows more than enough to read by.

The sounds of shuffling sleeping bags and grunts as her neighbors tossed and turned gradually gave way to long, quiet breaths and snores, until, at last, she was sure her attempt to read wouldn't bother anybody. Just as she was making to sit up, she caught a glimpse of someone moving across the room. The figure was clearly attempting to be stealthy, but Blake would have recognized Yang from the mountains of hair even if the blonde hadn't been in the light of the window.

Yang crept a few steps in the direction of the door before kneeling down and shaking two others. As they too slid from their sleeping bags, Blake saw that they were two of Yang's friends. Blake hadn't gotten their names, but one was the scrawny boy and the other the tall girl in the plaid shirt. Yang also made to shake a third, the plain-looking girl with the glasses, but a dismissive hand gesture waved her off. Yang and her two friends kept sneaking for the door, Yang's eyes scanning the room.

They passed a pair of boys who hadn't fallen asleep and were looking around to see what was happening. Yang held a finger to her lips before extending the same hand and beckoning with that same finger for them to follow her. Blake could see that the busty blonde was biting her lower lip. Blake raised an eyebrow, but she didn't broadcast her presence. The two boys looked at each other before slowly rising and following Yang. The group, now numbering five teens in pajamas, padded out of the room.

 _Troublemakers_ , Blake thought, feeling sadly similar to Schnee as she thought it, but what were they doing, snooping around on their first night here? And thinking about that look on Yang's face, those perfect teeth curling over those full lips as her eyes leered half-lidded, made Blake think of certain scenes from those novels that she only read when no one was around and her free hand got the urge to wander beneath her clothes.

She noticed her cheeks warming, and she rolled over to face the wall, forgetting all about her book. _Floozy_ , she thought, hoping she could put the thought of what those five must be getting up to out of her head as well.

#

Once they were out of earshot of the ballroom, Yang quickened the group's pace, their bare feet clapping softly against the linoleum floor. The professors had left the new students unsupervised, which only made her job easier, and there was no sign of anyone else awake in the whole of Beacon.

She pushed open the doors to the library, which let out an appropriate groan as they swung wide. The library was as devoid of life as the rest of the school, but there were enough windows for the place to be reasonably well lit. She looked around the expansive room until she spotted an empty table with a square of light from a window draped across it.

"Perfect," she said, casting a look back at her followers. Soren was closest, and was the only one of the boys wearing a shirt. The other two were quite handsome, now that she got a good look at them. One had brown hair, green eyes, and a thick jaw that made him look tough and a bit dim-witted at the same time, and the other was a scraggly blonde boy, whose brown eyes were wide with unease at what they were doing. Neither seemed to have realized what was happening. Soren looked back at them and smirked when he presumably came to the same conclusion.

"Mmm, you know how to pick 'em, Yang," Liz cooed as she pushed past the two of them, taking the time to run her fingers down their muscular arms as she did so. "You gonna get jealous, Soren?" she asked as she passed him.

He took the back of her head in his hand and pulled her down for a kiss. "Only that they're getting to feel it for the first time," he said after he pulled away.

Liz grinned and swatted him on the ass before joining Yang. Liz sat on the lip of the table, crossing one shapely leg over the other. Yang looked over her audience once more. Both stranger boys were blushing now, the first glimmer of understanding starting to appear in their eyes. Just seeing their expressions made Yang feel hot.

"Yang," Liz said, leaning forward to hook her chin over Yang's shoulder and putting her lips right next to Yang's ear, "they don't look ready yet."

"Hmm," Yang sounded, "I think you're right. What do you think we should do about that?"

Liz looked straight at the three boys, her grin from earlier not having moved. "Strip," she said. "Now."

Soren did so without another word. The other two turned redder, hesitating so that even when they complied, they were still behind Soren, even though he had a shirt to remove. Soren crossed his arms and waited, while the other two fidgeted and cupped themselves even though no one but Yang and Liz had eyes for the cruxes of their legs.

Liz made a disappointed grunt. "Yang, they still don't seem ready. Maybe they don't think we're pretty."

She dragged her fingers up and down Yang's back as she spoke, sending shivers through Yang's spine. The heat was going to Yang's head the way it did when her Semblance was close to activating. She found herself biting her lip again, and this time hadn't been intentional.

"No way," Yang replied. "We just need to give them a little motivation."

The moment she finished speaking, Liz trailed her lips up Yang's shoulder and to her neck, her hands coming around to comb across Yang's abs. Yang leaned back into Liz's arms, reaching back to stroke Liz's never-ending legs as she did so.

If one were to try to kiss their way from Liseran's feet to the crest of her thighs, their mouth would probably get tired before they finished. In addition to having an inseam long enough to measure out the units of a football field, years of farm work, track, and gymnastics had left her legs beautifully proportioned and firm, and Yang savored the feeling of goose bumps forming under her fingertips as Liz released what was hopefully the first of many heavy breaths that evening.

Liz grabbed the hem of Yang's pajama shirt and inched it upwards. Yang held up her arms so Liz could undress her, the garment struggling to be free of her breasts and hair. At last, the shirt was pulled away, revealing Yang's ample chest, unconstrained by a bra, for just a moment before a cascade of golden locks covered her again. Liz made quick work of that last concealment, tucking Yang's hair behind her back before moving her own hands forward to grip Yang's breasts.

Yang purred, a smile forming on her lips. She cracked her eyes to check on her observers. The first signs of activity were beginning to appear between their legs. The two strangers were completely lost to anything but the sight of the two beauties making out in front of them. Soren was likewise lost, but the expression on his face was less one of shock and more one of quiet lust and contentment. This wasn't his first time seeing this, after all, but she could tell he appreciated it no less for its familiarity.

Yang craned her neck to lock lips with her partner, their tongues pushing into each other's mouths. Liz's gropes became more forceful, her fingers pulling and twisting at Yang's nipples. Yang felt her muscles tighten, a tiny gasp on her part allowing Liz to dominate the kiss. Yang wasn't having that. She turned, pressing her boobs against Liz's, and resumed her tongue's assault, their mouths only parting when they both needed a breath.

Yang pushed her hands up the back of Liz's shirt, unclasping the taller girl's bra before pulling both shirt and underwear off in one motion. Liz's breasts were smaller than Yang's, but they were still D-cups, though on her long torso, they didn't look as large as they were. Liz angled their bodies to give the boys a better view, and Yang mashed their chests together as they resumed kissing. Liz's roaming fingers snagged the waistband of Yang's boyshorts and dragged them down until gravity took them the rest of the way.

Liz fondled Yang's bubbly butt, fingers sinking deep into the flesh before shifting to let it bounce back into shape. "God bless squats," she grunted into Yang's ear as she slapped both palms across Yang's glutes and squeezed, pulling the pliant cheeks apart. Yang wasn't sure how much the boys could see in the dim light, but judging by the sound of their breathing, even the promise was enough.

Yang pulled Liz to her feet, the farmer's daughter now having to lean down to kiss her. Yang yanked Liz's bottoms off as well, leaving them both completely nude. Yang dropped after the thin piece of cloth, spreading her legs and thrusting her ass out as her face came level with Liz's hips. A thin strip of close-trimmed hair crowned Liz's pussy, the first beads of sweat and arousal glistening in the moonbeams. As Yang leaned in and placed her first kiss on that patch of hair, she turned her eyes up to Liz's, the taller girl's lecherous smile starting to waver. Yang placed quick pecks and love bites around Liz's vulva, never quite reaching her pleasure spots, the subtle smell of sex starting to tickle Yang's nostrils.

"Don't fucking tease me," Liz groaned, falling back against the table. She grabbed a handful of Yang's hair as if it were the only handhold on the face of a sheer cliff.

Yang giggled and used her middle and index fingers to peel back Liz's labia before running her tongue as slowly as she could from the entrance of Liz's vagina to her clit, where Yang pulled back with a flick of her tongue that made Liz shudder. Yang stood back up, taking a moment to wrap her lips around one of Liz's nipples and suck until it got hard, and looked back at their audience. All three boys were erect.

"Much better," Liz breathed.

Yang's hands finally left Liz's body, and she sat on the table next to her friend, her toned legs opening to reveal her own pussy, hairless and growing wetter by the second. "First hole you put your tongue inside is the first you get to fuck," she cooed, beckoning them her finger.

Soren was the first to move. He marched straight to Yang, cupped her cheeks in his hands, and kissed her. His lips were rougher than Liz's, but his hands were soft, and his tongue danced with her own the way she'd taught him.

Yang gripped his chin and paused. "Such a romantic," she whispered with a smile before Soren moved in again, and her eyes screwed shut as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and his fingers found her clit. He knew all the right spots to touch her, and his fingers found each and every one like he was playing a harp, until her body felt like it was melting.

She heard Liz rise from the table and walk towards the other two boys, who must still be unsure of how to react. "Nervous?" she heard Liz ask.

"I—I've just never been with a girl as tall as you before," one of the boys replied.

Yang could believe that. The broad-faced boy was an inch or two shorter than Soren, and the blond boy was no taller than she was. Her eyes fluttered open as Soren broke their embrace.

"She isn't the one you should be worried about," he said before nodding his head at Yang. "This one's the maneater."

Yang smirked and gave him a playful snarl. She grabbed both his arms and whirled them around before pushing him backwards, splaying him across the table. She loomed over him a moment, like a lion over a kill, an image her wild blonde hair accentuated. A change washed over his face, his expression losing its animal hunger and becoming almost tender.

"I love it when your eyes get like that," he said. "Twinkling stars got nothing on you."

The warmth in Yang's crotch took a brief detour to her chest, her lips turning upwards. "Flatterer," she said as she leaned in towards his face.

His lips pursed to meet hers, but she placed a finger over his mouth and instead went in for his neck. Her hair brushed over her back and his chest as she teased the juncture of his shoulder. She traced landmarks down his body, nipping at his collarbone, swirling her tongue over one of his nipples, and placing kisses around his navel. His torso was toned from all the training they had done at Signal, but it always amused her that no amount of effort ever bulked him up.

At last she came to her destination. She pressed her cheek against his cock, feeling its warmth mingling with the heat of the blood in her face. His was hardly the largest she'd come across, rather average, really, but she'd taught him to use it well. She wasn't much of a size queen anyway. She kissed the tip, giggling as it twitched and a drop of pre-cum wet her lips. She licked up the liquid and let her gaze meet his. "Tasty as ever," she said.

"Pineapple, celery, and plenty of water," he said, reaching down to tangle his fingers in her hair. "Never fails."

She shut her eyes and ran her tongue from the base of his shaft to the tip, savoring the subtle feeling of each vein, before taking him into her mouth. His breath started growing more and more noticeable as she gradually increased her pace and took him deeper, the noise spurring her on. There was a soft thump to her left, and she cracked her eyes open to see Liz lay the brown-haired boy out alongside Soren. Instead of going down on him the way Yang was, Liz hopped up on the table and straddled the boy's head before draping her lithe body over his. Of the three men, he had the largest dick, but Yang had seen Liz fit most of a beer bottle down her throat, and her friend hardly seemed intimidated.

Liz tossed her hair over her shoulder so she could watch Yang and Soren, and she winked at the two of them as she and her date for the evening started sixty-nining. Yang's attempts to enjoy the view, however, were interrupted as she felt a tongue probe at her vagina. It seemed the other boy was tired of watching the rest of them getting on without him. Yang raised her ass to give him a better angle, now bent ninety degrees over Soren's lap.

The blond boy didn't need to spend too much time eating her out. Her makeout session with Liz had gotten her plenty excited, and she'd been moist since that afternoon just thinking about this. When she felt she was ready, she looked back, not bothering to remove the dick from her mouth, and motioned for him to go over to Liz's discarded shorts. He did so, and she gestured for him to search the pockets. He withdrew a handful of condoms and hurried to tear one open and put it on, leaving Yang to return her focus to Soren. A few moments later, she felt the rub of latex around her entrance just before he pushed into her pussy

Her mouth gaped around the cock in her mouth as she grunted in pleasure. She took joy in his first awkward thrusts, how he tried to find the right rhythm, and, once he'd found it, how much more confident the motion became, his hips going from a disjointed grind against her backside into a clap like the tick of a metronome that sent shockwaves up her body. She'd learned to appreciate the subtle differences each of her lovers had in those initial moments, the minute ways their myriad of bodily features enhanced the little feelings that accompanied the simple joy of friction inside her.

Soren's fingers were still in her hair, and as she overcame the first jolts of ecstasy at being penetrated, he sat up and gently pulled his fingernails across her scalp. A rumble rose in her throat. There were few things in the world Yang wouldn't trade for a good head scratch, and getting the opportunity to give her one was a privilege she offered only to those she trusted not to damage her hair. Soren had learned to do it exactly the way she liked it, and she knew that, if she let him, he could manipulate her right now more effectively than if her skull had handlebars.

She curled her arms around his waist and pulled him deeper into her mouth until her nose was touching his pelvis, a sharp groan coming from him as the tip of his penis ventured into her throat. She relaxed her esophagus as best she could to control her gag reflex, opening her eyes so she could look up at him. She could only imagine how heavy with desire her gaze must be. Seeing it seemed to kindle something in him, and he began to rock his hips lightly, his teeth clenched as her tongue painted trails of lightning across his length and her throat constricted around his cockhead.

Yang let herself drift away on the waves of pleasure coming from her scalp and her pussy. Beside her, Liz rose and lay across the table. Her partner got on top of her as soon as she'd slipped a condom over his cock, and as he thrust into her, she wrapped her long legs around his waist like a pair of pythons or a spider curling around a fly. The sounds the five of them made devolved into a chorus of moans and gasps, with the occasional gurgle from Yang when she tried to take Soren too deep down her throat or he thrust in too far, but they had danced this dance before and made no more than a few mistakes. There were the sounds of skin sliding and slapping against skin, and Yang reveled in the fact that there was no one around but them to hear it.

At last, the tension building between their legs had to give. The boy behind Yang came first, his rhythmic thrusts sputtering as he grabbed two fistfuls of Yang's thick, firm ass and buried himself as deep into her as he could. Liz used her legs as leverage as she pushed her hips against her partner's, faster and faster until they both climaxed within seconds of each other. Yang dropped to her knees, the sensation of being pulled out of leaving her both trembling and empty, one hand bracing against Soren's stomach while the other flew to her clit so she could finish herself off. She bobbed her head up on down on Soren's cock, both of them staring at each other without blinking until they both screwed their eyes shut at the pleasure of their impending orgasms.

Soren grabbed the back of her head, body bending over double as she pushed him over the edge. He exploded across her tongue, filling her mouth with his semi-sweet sperm as he hissed her name. She came a moment later, her lips opening in a long, silent moan, a few drops of his cum spilling onto her breasts as she rubbed her clit to ride the high.

When the feeling had passed, she fell back onto her butt, Soren's length leaving her mouth with strands of spunk and saliva forming bridges between the two until the distance broke them. Yang swished the cum around her mouth, enjoying the mealy texture, before she parted her lips wide enough for everyone to see the load on her tongue just before she swallowed it.

"Holy shit," the broad-faced boy muttered when she opened her mouth again to show it empty, and he collapsed back across the table to catch his breath.

Liz crouched beside Yang, one hand draped across her own knee and the other moving to play with a stray lock of Yang's hair.

"I think it's going to be a good year, don't you?" Yang asked, grinning even as she was panting.

"Mmhmm," Liz replied, leaning in to scoop the drops of white that were turning cool on Yang's chest onto her fingers so Yang could suck them clean.

"So," Yang said, hopping to her feet and stretching her back, "who's up for round two?"


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Blake did her best to stifle a yawn, rubbing at her eyes in the vain hope that, if she did so enough, no one would see the circles hanging under them. As she paced through the locker room to where she'd stored Gambol Shroud, she caught sight of Yang and her friends chatting, and she glared at them even though none of them were looking her way to notice. As much as her anxiety had been playing up the past few days, they probably weren't entirely at fault for how little sleep she had gotten last night, but after Yang and the other two had returned from their escapades, smelling just strongly enough of sex that Blake could smell it but no one else would, Blake had found it impossible to make her brain shut down.

Now she was getting by on maybe four hours of sleep. She'd hoped being so tired would have made it impossible to be aroused, but being woken up that morning mid sex dream had proven that to be wishful thinking. So no, maybe Yang and her friends weren't to blame for Blake's exhaustion, but they'd put the thought of sex in her head on the one day she wouldn't be able to do anything about it. She managed to subdue her irritation only with the promise that she would spend that night, after rooms were assigned and her new teammates were abed, in the bathroom with the steamiest romance novel she owned.

As she continued towards her locker, she noticed Schnee talking with a tall redhead. Blake identified her as Pyrrha Nikos, the champion of Sanctum. Blake didn't know much about her, hadn't known much of anything about her before yesterday, but it was hard not to find someone at Beacon who wasn't brimming with knowledge on the subject and eager to share. If all the stories were right, then Blake would have to admit that not everyone coming to Beacon was as much of an amateur as she had assumed, but Blake also knew that being the crown jewel of a combat school wasn't the same as real-world experience.

Blake would have to keep both eyes on her to see if she lived up to her reputation, but Schnee had clearly bought every story ever told about the Great Miss Nikos, going by the way she kept smiling while she talked. Initial impressions had Blake convinced that Schnee was incapable of smiling that much unless it was to manipulate someone. It was the smile she probably gave daddy when she wanted him to buy her something. She couldn't tell if it was having an effect on Pyrrha or if the redhead were just being polite, but if nothing else, she hoped Schnee and Nikos wound up on different teams, if only to make Schnee less insufferably smug.

By the time she reached her locker near the back of the room, close to the showers, Goodwitch's voice came on over the intercom, announcing that they needed to start making their way to the cliffs for initiation. Blake readied her gear as the rest of the students filed out. As Blake turned to follow, she looked over at the showers. With everyone out of the room, she might be able to sneak in a quickie if she used her Semblance to get to the cliffs in time…

She shook her head. This place was becoming a bad influence. She did her best to think about something else and jogged down the hall for the door with the rest of the students.

#

Soren stood on the metal platform on the edge of the cliff, one of many that would momentarily be launching he and the rest of the initiates into the Emerald Forest, while Ozpin and Glynda were explaining the way teams were to be assigned. Soren had to say one thing about Ozpin, he was an oddball if nothing else. Assigning partners based merely on eye contact wouldn't have been Soren's first choice. Neither professor had mentioned how the rest of the team was chosen, but Soren knew that all students were put in groups of four from stories he'd heard from Yang father and uncle. He hoped that that decision would at least be left up to something more than chance.

Then again, he couldn't be sure there wasn't some degree of strategy in Ozpin's plan. While all the metal panels looked identical from where he stood, slight differences in angle or the force used to propel them could make certain pairings more likely, though if Ozpin had designs on who should be paired with who, then it made little sense to add a dash of randomness to the works instead of just assigning teams. Perhaps Ozpin thought undesirable matchups would be more accepted if those involved thought their partnership had occurred on accident.

The first spring sounded, and Soren watched as Artemisia was catapulted out over the forest, her longbow sprouting into a glider as she angled her way northwards, where the hidden temple was supposedly waiting. One by one, the students were launched over the cliff. He watched Briseis and Liseran go, as well as the two boys he'd shared his friends with the night before. He was coming soon. He looked over at Yang, a few spots down the line from himself. He was shaking. He hadn't realized how nervous he was until this moment, but as he looked at Yang, he couldn't help wanting her to be beside him, telling him it was going to be alright.

There were only two more people to go before he would be off when, finally, she turned to look at him. She flashed him a determined grin, the left side of her lips dimpling a little harder than her right, the way it always did when she was excited. That was enough. He smiled back and held out his arm. He activated his Semblance, telekinetically calling Aegis, his shield, to his hand. The weapon bore the symbol of an owl in flight across the boss, so why was he fretting a little flight of his own? The girl to his left rocketed off into the distance, and Soren braced himself just before the platform beneath his feet did the same to him.

The sounds of the rest of the world disappeared in a rush of wind, and he swore he felt his stomach drop into his pelvis. He nearly tumbled in the air, but he held his shield above his head and pulled it with his Semblence to right himself. He repeated the process a few times to slow his fall, until he touched down on a tree branch. He shot a look back at the cliffs. If he were being honest, he'd say he was hoping to see where Yang would fall and head straight there, but as far as he'd flown, he could see little more than specks.

He shrugged and telekinetically activated the gears inside Aegis. The shield's outer rim folded in on itself, leaving saw-like teeth on its edge. He bit the spikes into the wood of the tree and hopped off the branch. Another mental command caused the pistons within the shield to expand and spin, and he rode the armor-turned-buzzsaw down the trunk until his feet struck grass. He started north, keeping to the brush to hide himself from both Grimm and potential teammates he didn't particularly want. He supposed this made him as bad as Ruby when it came to not branching out to make new friends, but Yang was an exception for him.

As he did his best to balance stealth and speed, he stepped in a puddle he hadn't noticed. The water coiled around his foot like quicksand, and before he could react, his foot was wrenched upwards. He braced himself to strike the ground, but found his head pressed against something soft while a pair of corded arms put him in a headlock.

"Looks like you're not getting rid of me for a while," a familiar voice said into his ear. Liz.

She held his head against her boob a while longer before releasing him, letting him stagger back onto his feet.

"Were you going to do that to whoever came through here?" he asked as he smoothed the ruffle in his hair.

"Probably," she said, crossing her arms and cocking her hips while a triumphant smirk edged up her lips. "Let 'em know what they're in for."

Soren smiled, but of all his friends, Liz was the last one he'd wanted to meet out here. Not because he disliked her but because he trusted her to be fine without having a former friend as a teammate. The same could be said of Yang, but he'd selfishly wanted to be with her. He also didn't want Briseis to be on her own with a bunch of strangers, and he wouldn't wish Artemisia on anyone else. He knew that, even in the best scenario, there would be at least one of his friends placed in another team, but there was no changing anything now.

"Glad to have you with me," he said.

"Partner," she said, holding out her arm to him.

He did the same and grasped her forearm, letting her curl her fingers around his own. With that, they broke and resumed their journey into the forest.

#

Blake leapt from tree to tree, traversing the uneven branches as easily as a road. She had no real plan for meeting up with anyone or even achieving her objective, vague as it was. She did, however, want to demonstrate to Ozpin that she was not the novice some of the others no doubt were, and what better way than being the first to reach the temple? Everyone was headed there anyway, so why not team up with the first person that made it there after she arrived? Moving also helped clear her head. The focus on her footing kept her anxieties at bay, and the wind on her face cooled the heat that had been sitting in her loins all morning.

It brought back to mind memories of darting through the trees with Adam at her side. It wasn't that different from the day she'd left him. That was not as comforting a thought as the simple joy of motion, but it did serve to remind her that she had nothing to fear. This was still her element. It might be for different reasons and under the eyes of different people, but this was how she had lived for as long as she could remember.

The sound of a roar broke upon her ears, and her treetop odyssey finally paused. The bellow had belonged to a Grimm, too big for a mere Beowolf. If a Grimm were making that much noise, it was no longer stalking its prey but moving in for the kill, and with a forest full of students, Blake had little doubt what that prey was. She cast a glance to the north, but her next jump was in the direction of the roar.

If the Grimm had attacked someone like Pyrrha Nikos, then they likely needed no help, but if it were one of those softer students, someone who would freeze under pressure, then Blake had to do what the professors had said they wouldn't and intervene. This was what being a huntress was about, after all. She supposed she was about to meet her new teammate. She just hoped it wasn't Schnee, because she would be sorely tempted to stay her hand and let the Grimm have their way with her.

She didn't have to go far to find the source of the commotion. A pair of Ursa were standing in a clearing across from an increasingly familiar head of blonde hair. Blake's first thought was unease. She wasn't sure how well she would get along with a person like Yang for the next four years, but she forced herself to remember that this was a person in need of saving. Just before she could step in, however, the Grimm attacked. Yang sidestepped them with a speed Blake hadn't expected and slugged the second one in the stomach. A concussive shot and gout of fire burst from her fist, and the Ursa tumbled back from the force.

 _Did she just punch a Grimm?_

She heard Yang talking, though she couldn't make out the words. Yang was playing with them. Perhaps her impressions on the skill level of the other students hadn't been so accurate. The Grimm that wasn't nursing its bruises charged, swinging its claws twice at the blonde girl, but Yang dodged as effortlessly as ever. At least, Blake thought she did. Once Yang had put a few feet between her and her assailant, she froze. Had the Ursa managed to cut her, blind her with a swipe to the eyes? Once again, before she could ascertain an answer, Yang was barreling down on both Grimm, this time on fire.

Yang was the one roaring now, her Aura forming a visible blaze around her hair and shoulders, and she slammed like a train into the Grimm that had struck at her, her fists blurring as she pummeled the helpless Ursa to pieces. With one final blow, she blasted the creature back through the air, smashing through trees and setting them ablaze as her Aura clung to its flesh like the inferno it resembled.

The second Grimm had leapt aside to avoid being struck by the cannonball that had once been its ally, unwittingly turning its back to Blake. The Ursa growled at Yang, but as the blonde turned her attention towards it, it hesitated. Blake took the opportunity to unsheathe Gambol Shroud and transform it into its sickle form before flinging it through the air. The black cord tied to it allowed her to trace its flight as it wove through the branches of the trees and found its nest in the Ursa's back.

As the Grimm pitched forward in death, Blake rode the momentum down to the clearing, where she landed without a sound. Yang faltered for a moment, panting with anger that she now had no outlet for. Blake shot her a little smile. Let her know what it felt like to have to repress a desire for a little while.

Yang huffed, though not bad-naturedly. "I could've taken him," she said.

#

Soren sighed. He may not be able to see any of the other students beyond Liz, but he was certain the two of them were making the slowest progress. They'd taken cover when a giant Nevermore had flown overhead, though Soren would swear he'd seen two people hanging onto its feathers. He would have dismissed the thought entirely if he hadn't been so sure he had caught sight of Ruby's telltale red cape. Yang's little sister was reckless, certainly, but even he wasn't sure she had it in her to hitch a ride on a Grimm of that size.

"We're going to be the last to finish," he grumbled as the top of the hill revealed nothing ahead of them but more forest.

"We're not fast," Liz said in a way that suggested she didn't care if they took all night. "What do you want?"

"We could try fighting through the next pack of Beowolves instead of taking the long way around."

"Yeah, and if we run into something like that Nevermore, you have fun dealing with it when your Aura is depleted. We're not like Yang. We can't do the whole bravado, one-man-army thing the way she can. We have to play it smart."

"I know. I'm just—venting," he muttered as he began trekking deeper into the woods.

After a while, a rumble like thunder rolled through the trees, bringing them both to a stop as they dipped into combat stances.

"How close?" Liz whispered, fingers poised to discharge a disk from one of the holsters on her hip.

"Not very," Soren answered. "Not close enough for us to get there in time to help."

"What if it's Brie or Art?"

Soren didn't say anything, but after a moment's hesitation, he waved her in the direction of the sound. After a few minutes of running, they came to a path of leveled trees, but no sign of what had put them there. The trail stretched out of sight in both directions.

"What the hell did this?" Liz asked.

Soren scanned the area. "Could be a Goliath, going off the size of the trail…" His eyes paused on several sites where it looked like a giant spike had been stuck into the earth. "Death Stalker, and a big one," he said, pointing the spots out to Liz. "That's where its feet gouged up the dirt."

Liz put her hands on her hips and smirked at him. "Look at the little huntsman. You know your tracking."

"I know my Grimm," he said.

The trail led straight north, so he motioned for them to follow it. As he was making to leap over a fallen tree, however, an Ursa appeared in front of him. He barely managed to get his shield up in time to block its paw, but the blow hammered him into the mud and drove the wind from his lungs. The beast loomed over him from atop the felled oak, only a simple hop between it and his life.

Before it could do so, Liseran moved. With her right hand, she discharged a coin-sized disk into her palm, and with her left, she used her Semblance to tear a stream of water from the churned-up muck. The water scooped up the device in her right hand before spitting towards the Ursa. It struck the Grimm's feet, and the disk Liz had primed burst open in a spray of liquid nitrogen, turning the water to ice and sealing the Grimm's claws to the tree. The beast pitched and yawed as it attempted to free itself, the ice cracking but not shattering. Soren took the free moment to roll over, transforming Aegis into a buzzsaw again as he moved, and he flung the shield straight up, searing through the Ursa's neck.

The Grimm's head fell into his lap, but he had to fling himself to the side to keep the rest of the body from landing on him as well. For a moment, he sat frozen, flinching as Aegis came clattering down onto the corpse it had created, and then the only sound was his own heavy breathing.

"You alright?" Liz asked.

He nodded, though he was still staring at the Grimm that had almost killed him. "See?" he said. "Told you we could fight them. No problem."

Liz snickered. "Sure thing, cap. Let's get moving."

He took one more deep breath before retrieving his weapon, and the two set off for the temple.

#

Soren and Liz emerged from the forest to see a battleground, or at least what was left of one. Their path of broken trees ended in the clearing, and feathers that presumably belonged to the Nevermore they had seen earlier stuck up from the landscape like needles from a pincushion. The temple stood just beyond them, a ruined circle of pillars and bricks turned gray by the years. They advanced cautiously, using the feathers as cover as they approached, but whatever had been in the area had moved on elsewhere.

As their feet transitioned from grass to stone, Soren observed what remained of the temple, what hadn't been reduced to rubble. There were a number of little altars or podiums arranged around the circle. Most were empty, but two still had relics on them. Soren strode over and picked one up. It looked like a chess piece: a black pawn.

"I think we're the last ones here," he said.

"You sure?" Liz asked, picking up the other piece, also a black pawn. "You think he meant for each of us to take one?"

"Why else would there be two of the same piece?" he asked.

Liz was opening her mouth to answer when a hum reached Soren's ears just before an arrow struck the pillar behind him, mere inches from his hand, causing him to drop the relic.

"Because that piece is ours," came another familiar voice.

They retraced the arrow's flight to see Artemisia, standing with her bow drawn and aimed at them. Briseis was at her side, her staff in its stun-baton form and her mouth agape with horror.

"Art! Why would you do that?" she cried. "You could have hurt him!"

"I had a clean shot," Artemisia replied, lowering her bow and giving Soren a mischievous smile.

Soren finally let himself exhale. He couldn't say he was surprised. After all, this was the same girl who, when she, Yang, and Liz had decided to take his virginity together, had dragged him into his bedroom and put him in a standing full nelson while Yang and Liz took turns kissing him.

"You're gonna really hurt me one day," he said, bending down and picking the relic back up. "And when you do, I will hold it against you."

He tossed it to her, and she swiped it from the air.

Liz grinned. "Alright, guys," she said. "What do you say we get the hell out of here before anymore giant Grimm show up?"

Briseis practically cheered her agreement, and the four of them turned back south and back towards the thin line on the horizon that marked the distant cliffs they'd come from.

#

The auditorium of Beacon was packed with onlookers, teachers and parents of the new huntsmen and huntresses in training. Though no one had come through the Emerald Forest unscathed, no deaths or serious injuries had occurred, and everyone had managed to find the temple and return safely to the school. Now, all of them were packed into the middle of the room while Ozpin read aloud the names of the new students and assigned them to their teams.

Soren saw Yang and Ruby standing a few rows behind them, looking tired but still excited. He hadn't gotten the opportunity to speak to either of them yet, but they looked like they'd had an interesting sojourn through the woods. The group ahead of his stepped up to the stage, meaning Soren's was next. He couldn't deny feeling a little antsy. Upon their return from the forest, they had been led here with little more than a quick break to wash up and placed into rows based on which relics they had recovered.

That had been enough for him to guess that Artemisia and Briseis were to be his and Liseran's other teammates, but it was when Ozpin had started assigning team leaders that he had started to get nervous. There weren't exactly any on his team that he would consider leader material. Briseis, while braver than people gave her credit for and not as naïve as some assumed, still wouldn't handle the pressures of leadership well. She'd always gotten upset whenever anyone around her got into an argument, and to say she was bad at mediating said conflict would have been an understatement.

Artemisia could certainly dissolve a conflict, if she didn't feel like escalating it, but if she were to be given the duty, Ozpin would be better off changing the title from 'group leader' to 'taskmistress' for the sake of accuracy. Artemisia didn't know how to have power without abusing it, which made Soren glad that she at least didn't seem all that interested in having it.

Liseran was an odd one. If he'd had to choose between the four of them, she would probably be his pick. She was a wild card, yes, but she had a down-to-earth brain beneath her party-girl exterior. She could mediate a conflict only inasmuch as she could ignore it, but that was worthy of a Peace Prize compared to her competition. She was also far more driven than her laid-back attitude would have people believe. The only problem with her was that, of anyone he'd ever met, she had to be the most averse to being made to shoulder responsibility.

Then there was himself. Probably the least likely among them to get the job. He hadn't even unlocked his aura until so long after the rest of his classmates at Signal that rumors had started to go around that he didn't have a soul. He'd won no more than a handful of sparring matches in combat practice, and he'd only graduated because of how well he had done on written exams and non-battle related subjects. He would have had the highest grade in the whole academy for the technical design of his weapon if Ruby hadn't showed up at the last minute with that damned scythe. Having a scythe user and combat instructor as her uncle was a hard handicap to beat.

"Soren Glaux," Ozpin said, and the group behind Soren's stepped up to take their place, forcing he and his teammates to take to the stage. Soren was just glad Ozpin didn't mention that the four of them had been dead last in completing their initiation. "Artemisia Wormwood, Briseis Hippodameia, and Liseran Currant. You four retrieved the black pawn pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team SABL."

Soren's breath hitched. He'd observed the pattern of the previous teams, and the leader's initial had always come first in the team's name. Surely it was just a coincidence. They couldn't possibly…

"Led by Soren Glaux."

Soren didn't know what to feel. Even the words themselves seemed to soar over his head without reaching his brain, but he knew he must have heard them if he was being so affected by them. Was he ready for this? He couldn't even grasp the weight of what had just been told to him, it felt so unreal. Then, a hand was patting him on the back, and he turned to see Liz beaming at him. Artemisia gave an impertinent little huff, but as she adjusted her glasses, Soren caught her smiling as well. Briseis threw herself at him, arms wrapping around his neck and making his stumble.

She was saying something in his ear, but he didn't hear her over the sound of applause and the noise of his own thoughts. Even as his teammates congratulated him, he couldn't believe it. He looked around the audience for something, anything that would let him know he wasn't dreaming, anything that would tell him that this was a good thing and not the biggest mistake Ozpin had ever made. His search stopped as his gaze found Yang's.

Any other day, she would have flashed him that winning grin of hers, so toothy it would have looked like a snarl if it weren't so pretty. She would have thrown up her hands and clapped or let out a whoop of joy, pointed at him and yelled something like, "Way to go!" or "Atta boy!" But she wasn't doing any of those things. Her hands were at her sides, and though she was smiling, her lips weren't parted. Her eyes were brimming over, but even that couldn't dim the joy on her face.

She was smiling at him like the mother he'd never had, and though he knew his father wasn't in the audience, no doubt too busy with work, he didn't care. Just knowing that Yang was proud of him was worth more than any title Ozpin could have given him. Without realizing it, he broke out grinning, and he swept Briseis off the floor and twirled her around as he laughed and laughed until even the stage around him seemed to fade into the sound of his happiness and the feel of his friends, his teammates, pressed up against him.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Blake lay awake under her covers, feigning sleep while she waited for her new teammates to pass out. She was a part of team RWBY now, and while her comrades weren't exactly the ones she would have chosen, she had to admit that their trial in the Emerald Forest had warmed her to them a little. Even Schnee, who she grudgingly supposed she would have to start calling Weiss from now on so as not to seem standoffish. If nothing else, she could at least rest assured that her teammates were strong enough to be relied on in a fight. Living with them might turn out to be another matter, but that was a question for tomorrow, when they had planned to wake up early to unpack and decorate before classes started.

There was also the team across the hall: JNPR, the ones they had fought alongside in the forest. Other than Pyrrha, they were all… She supposed quirky was a suitable word. Odd, while more accurate, seemed a bit hurtful. Still, if those moments of battlefield bonding carried over into a real friendship, then Blake supposed having them live so close would be a blessing. Yang had also told them that some friends of hers were living on the same floor, albeit on the other side of the building, but having witnessed what Yang and her friends got up to, Blake wasn't sure how involved with them she cared to be.

She fought not to let her cat ears twitch as she listened to the sounds of the room again. Wearing her bow even to bed to hide her Faunus nature was going to be a pain. Schnee—Weiss was definitely asleep. She had dutifully put head to pillow as soon as they'd finished introducing themselves and made their plans for the next morning, and now she was breathing softly and slowly like the angel she resembled only physically.

Ruby had been antsy all evening, not that Blake could blame her. To find out that she was two years younger than any of them and had still been appointed team leader was no doubt a privilege and a burden on her, and the younger girl had been jittering well after Weiss had gone under. Discerning when she fell asleep, however, couldn't have been easier for one simple reason: Ruby snored. Thankfully, it was little more than a rhythmic little snort, rather than the grinding of a chainsaw. If it had been any louder, Blake would have worried that she'd never be able to sleep again unless she could think of a way to plug all four of her ears without looking conspicuous.

Yang was the most difficult to determine, despite being in the bed on the same side of the room as Blake's. Every time Blake thought the blonde was asleep, there'd come the crinkle of bedclothes as she rolled over or sighed in a way that Blake couldn't discern as being sleepy or awake. Ruby had been asleep for half an hour now, and Yang was still turning. Blake did her best to stop rubbing her thighs together as she waited, but this was starting to get ridiculous. She'd been horny all day, damn it! They'd had a fight for their lives mere hours ago, so why couldn't Yang just get tired and go to sleep?

Finally, Blake couldn't take it anymore. She sat up, making sure she made no noise, and looked over at Yang's bed. The blonde was splayed across the mattress, having kicked her way out from perhaps half of the covers. Her mouth was open, her eyes were closed, and her diaphragm rose and fell far too slowly for her to be awake. Blake furrowed her brow. Looking at her, Yang had probably been asleep for an hour, only keeping Blake from her catharsis because she was a restless sleeper. Not to mention, with her mouth gaping like that and with her hair ruffled and her limbs flung out from all her moving around, she painted something of a sensual figure. Blake supposed, knowing what little of Yang she did, that the image was appropriate, if not a trifle irritating.

But at least she was asleep. Blake crept out of her bed and crouched amongst her suitcases in the corner by her bed. She rifled through the compartments of her bags until she found her copy of Ninjas of Love and her hairbrush. She took them, along with her Scroll and her earbuds, into the bathroom and locked the door. The bathroom had dimmer switches, though Blake had no idea why they would have such things installed at a school. She supposed it was to save money on light bulbs and electricity, but it seemed a tad saucy to give hormonal teenagers coed rooms with access to mood lighting. However, a little window of obscured glass at head height in the shower let in a nice ambient glow without her having to turn on the lights

She sat on the toilet, freshly cleaned in preparation of her team's arrival. How lovely that she would be the one to give it a christening. She plugged in her earbuds and clicked through her Scroll to her music playlists. She Scrolled down until she reached the one titled 'Reading Music' and set it to play. Soft guitar and saxophone music began to tickle in her ears. The playlist was mostly smooth jazz and lounge music, but not the kind she would listen to in public. A few seconds into the song, and a heavy, distinctively female breath sounded alongside the music. By the time the song was halfway over, the instruments were joined by a carnal chorus of moans and wet, popping sounds that could have been kisses put probably weren't.

Blake closed her eyes and swayed to the erotic tunes, letting the sound venture from her ears down to her core. The rocking made her throb, and she tried to make the pulses of pleasure sync up with the beat of the song. When she felt her breath starting to catch in her throat, her body's heat moving between her legs and to either side of her nose, she finally opened her book to the page she'd left off on, where the novice ninja Miyu had just been captured by the mysterious Master Kenta.

 _Miyu struggled to free her arm_ , Blake read, _but the kunai Kenta had thrust through her sleeve held firm, and the weapon's blunt blade made tearing through the fabric impossible. To make matters worse, she couldn't even struggle with all her might, poised on the tree branch so high above the ground. One wrong move could send her plummeting to her death._

 _"Careful," Kenta said, striding as easily across the narrow branch as he might a wide bridge. "Lose your balance at this height, and a rookie shinobi like you won't be able to recover."_

 _He stalked closer, taking a moment to flick the hilt of the kunai imbedded in the tree's trunk, as if he needed anything more than her continued presence to confirm its solidity. He reached his gloved hands to his mask and lifted it off his head. Beneath was revealed a handsome face, with a strong, angular jaw and a long, sharp chin. His eyes were like a cat's, bright and green, and a scar stretched from his forehead, across his left eye, to his ear. He was older than her, but not so old that his face had lost its youthful vigor._

 _"I've had my eyes on you for a long time, Miyu," he said as he reached up and pulled the pin that was holding his hair back. Gorgeous locks of silver hair cascaded down to his shoulders._

 _"I've heard all the gossipers talking about you, about the beautiful daughter of the great Akita family," he continued as he removed the glove from his left hand. "And you are beautiful, Miyu."_

 _He slid his bare hand under the lapel of her gi and cupped her bosom._

Blake slipped her free hand into her kimono and fondled her right breast, alternately squeezing and rolling her thumb over her hardening nipple.

 _Miyu cried out, but there was no one in the forest to hear her except Kenta. His touch made her want to melt, as if his palm were pumping heat into her body. When it seemed simply feeling her was not enough, with a flick of his wrist, her gi fell open to reveal her sculpted bust._

Blake shrugged her kimono off her shoulders, moonlight washing over her chest as she resumed groping her tit.

 _Miyu's insides felt like they were on fire, each motion of Kenta's fingers across her yielding flesh driving rational thought from her mind. It took all her focus to keep her shaking knees from collapsing and sending her tumbling downwards._

 _"What sort of ninjutsu is this?" she stammered, barely able to maintain her composure._

 _"No ninjutsu," Kenta replied, tweaking her nipple in a way that made her mind go blank. "Just skill. You crave power, don't you? You want to break away from the bonds your family has placed on you? I can teach you how. I can make you invisible, able to strike from the shadows with impunity. I can teach you to do what I'm doing and drive men and women alike mad with a simple touch. Would you like that?"_

 _Miyu's body was crying out for more, and what little logic she still possessed knew that the man spoke true. He had ambushed her effortlessly, defeated and immobilized her too quickly for her to react. He wasn't lying when he said he could give her strength._

 _"Yes," she pleaded. "Teach me."_

 _He smiled, though whether his intentions were noble or malicious, Miyu couldn't tell. "Very well," he whispered in her ear. "Then you must do exactly as I say. Will you?"_

 _She nodded, her tongue suddenly unable to form words. He gripped the back of her gi, and without a word of warning, he tore it off entirely._

Blake sat up just enough to undo the sash at her waist before letting the outfit slide down her arms into a puddle on the floor, leaving her in nothing but her lacy black panties. As Kenta continued exploring Miyu's body, Blake's hands mirrored his, going from her breasts to her smooth stomach, testing the difference between the soft flesh around her navel and the firm texture of her abdominals.

When at last Kenta's probing touch reached between Miyu's legs, Blake couldn't get her hand down her panties fast enough, tangling her fingers in her pubic hair. She was already soaked, foreplay practically a formality. She teased the inner lining of her labia and used her fingertips to flirt with her entrance, and she had to bite her lip to keep from groaning. When Kenta freed Miyu of the last of her clothes, Blake tore her underwear off and let it fall to rest beside her kimono. Blake attacked her clit, alternating between rubbing with her fingers and gently patting it in time with the music in her ears.

At last, Kenta freed Miyu from the tree, leaving her clinging to the branch with her legs and putting her face to face with his erection. Blake followed Miyu's lead, slipping three fingers past her lips as her heroine took her new master into her mouth. Blake could taste herself on her hand, a tang that lingered on her tongue but wasn't unpleasant. When her fingers were dripping with spit, she grabbed her hairbrush and started running her sopping hand up and down its handle. As Kenta lifted Miyu off the branch, her legs dangling over his arms, Blake spread her thighs and placed the butt of her brush against her pussy.

The book was unnecessary now, so she placed it on the sink, closed her eyes, and pushed the handle of the brush inside, just an inch before she pulled back and repeated the process. Gradually she pushed deeper, teasing new depths, new degrees of sensitivity, until all four inches of plastic were inside her. She paused a moment to catch her breath, letting her makeshift dildo rest as deep as it could plumb her. She imagined herself there in the woods with Kenta, his broad chest pressed against her slender body while his strong hands kept her back from rubbing against the rough bark of the tree. She imagined her legs kept wide by his powerful arms and his throbbing manhood encased within her, pre-cum weeping into her like drops of napalm.

She began to gyrate her wrist, the brush handle dilating her walls and striking every tender spot as it, appropriately, combed through her. She slid it in and out, slow at first, but picking up speed as it became harder and harder to control herself. Soon, the hand that was helping her keep balanced on the toilet forsook its duty and flew to her clit, leaving her to adjust her position to keep her balance, a task made difficult as she began bucking her hips in time with the motions of her hands.

It felt like all her blood was being funneled to her vagina, building pressure like a universal collapse. Her body was on autopilot, the only voluntary motions being her attempts at controlling her voice and keeping herself from falling over. She was at the point of no return, where even if Yang or Weiss were to open the door, she wouldn't be able to stop. Just the thought of one of them walking in provided the release valve for all the pent-up frustration. The joints of her legs locked up as she came, her thighs and hips in spasms as wave after wave of pleasure slammed into her, each twitch of her fingers on the brush lifting her back to the top of the mountain whenever she felt she was coming down.

She wasn't sure how long the orgasm lasted, but when it had finally ceased, she collapsed in a fit of panting breaths, her bangs clinging to her forehead. Beads of arousal dripped down her legs, carrying away the tension in her core. She removed the brush handle from her pussy the way she might have pulled a knife from a wound, each motion making her twitch and wince until it was gone, leaving her feeling strangely empty. She sat there with her eyes closed, her music the only thing still forging on. When she'd caught her breath and the aftershocks had faded, she looked towards the window, the blurred image of the moon visible behind the frosted glass.

 _I needed that_ , she thought with a small smile.

She put her clothes back on after she'd cleaned herself off, and she washed her brush and her hands under the tap. When she'd dried off with the towel she'd stowed under the sink, she turned her music off and cracked the bathroom door. She peeked into the bedroom and was glad to see that she hadn't woken her teammates. She supposed that made her a ninja of self-love.

 _And that joke means I desperately need to go to sleep_ , she thought, almost rolling her eyes at herself.

She put her book, her Scroll, and her hairbrush away before hopping into bed and snuggling into the covers. Exhaustion stole over her in seconds, and, finally contented, she drifted off.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Yang looked up from her Scroll as she strolled into the library. Brie had texted her that they were waiting for her on the second floor, so she made her way to the stairs. As she walked, she passed the table she and Liz had dirtied their first night, and she had to admit she felt a certain thrill at seeing a girl seated on the spot where she and Liz had made out. When she reached her friends' table, Soren and Brie gave her a wave, which she returned before sitting down between Liz and Soren, Brie and Art seated across from them.

"I just don't see how you can deal with looking so sloppy when everyone else is dressed so nice," Brie said in Liz's direction, apparently stressing an argument that far predated Yang's arrival.

Yang had to admit, Liz cut something of a shabby figure in her uniform. Her jacket and vest were both unbuttoned, as were the top three buttons of her shirt, just enough to reveal cleavage. Her skirt was a bit short, and her socks barely reached halfway up her calf, leaving most of her delicious legs bared. The jacket also looked to be a size too big for her, which impressed Yang if only because of how hard it was to find clothes that weren't small on Liz's lanky form. Then again, Liz's long-standing record as tallest women ever had been destroyed by none other than the towering Professor Goodwitch, so perhaps faculty sympathy for the overly tall wasn't unwarranted.

"The syllabus said we have to wear the uniform," Liz answered. "It didn't say I how many buttons had to be done up."

"It did say that one had to dress decently," Art said, not looking up from her book. "Don't you think you're cutting it a little close with all that skin you're showing? Do you want all the boys in class to be staring at you all day?"

Art herself had apparently run back to the room and changed now that classes were out for the day, now dressed in a homely blouse and skirt of her own. Each button and snap of hers was done, and her dark stockings meant that you couldn't see any of her skin besides her face and her hands.

"What? Hell, no. I just like to look down at 'em sometimes," Liz said, taking handfuls of her breasts as she said it.

Yang giggled, while Art raised an eyebrow. "You making sure they didn't pop off and leave you for someone more sensible?" she asked.

"No, but when I'm bored in class and my eyes start to glaze over, I can just look down and be, like, yeaaah," Liz said, looking down and grinning lecherously at her own cleavage.

Yang laughed, lurching over the table. Art pinched the bridge of her nose. "Narcissism at its finest, ladies and gentlemen," she sighed.

"Don't judge," Yang said. "Whenever I have trouble sleeping, I always play with my boobs until I fall asleep."

Brie whirled to her, her face a mask of horror. "Yang, you masturbate in the same room as your teammates?"

"No, no! It's not sexual or anything. I just sorta—bat them around. It's relaxing."

"For the record," Liz said toward Brie, "I masturbate in our bedroom every night after you go to sleep."

Brie's face turned the color of a cherry, her mouth dropping open in disbelief. Yang guffawed, Liz joining in until Brie realized they were making fun of her. Her face remained red, but now it looked more like a dull fury.

"Trust me, Brie," Liz said. "Everyone's sticking to the dress code for now because they don't know how strict the rules are. Ruby still wears her cape around, and I haven't gotten in trouble yet. As soon as people realize that no one cares, they'll all come to class like this."

Brie made a noncommittal grunt, and Liz leaned back in her chair. "So, Yang," she said. "How's your first week of classes been?"

"Alright, I guess" Yang replied. "Not sure about some of the teachers though. You guys have Professor Port for anything?"

Soren and Liz groaned at the name, which seemed to catch Brie by surprise.

"I like him," Brie said, clearly upset that her fervor was not shared by all.

"Dull," Soren muttered, looking more bored just for thinking about it.

Liz just stuck out her tongue and gagged.

"Well, I'm pretty sure he tried to flirt with me on the first day of class," Yang said.

"Ew, ew, ew, ew!" Liz cried, shaking her head and squeezing her eyes shut as if that could block the mental image.

"Don't forget Oobleck," Art chimed in.

This time, everyone groaned. "I can never understand what he's saying," Brie whined. "I've had to copy notes from Art for the past week."

"And it's really distracting the way he moves around all the time," Soren said.

"Still better than Goodwitch," Liz hissed. "I didn't get written up or anything, but when she saw the way I was wearing the uniform, she glared at me like I was on death row or something. Don't know where she gets off, considering how much she shows of her own rack."

"Maybe she wasn't glaring at you," Yang said with a sly smile. "Maybe she was checking you out. I mean her whole look just screams sexual frustration."

"She does carry that riding crop," Brie tentatively admitted.

"And she does dress like a librarian from a porn film," Art said.

Liz got a weird look on her face, like her stomach had started hurting. "I don't know. Not sure I'd be comfortable sleeping with someone like her."

"Too intimidating to fuck a teacher?" Soren asked.

"It's not that. It would just be weird having sex with someone taller than me."

"Welcome to how it feels being with you," Soren chuckled.

"Hey," Yang interjected. "I understand where she's coming from. It'd be weird for me too. I've never fucked a woman with tits as big as mine, and hers might be bigger."

"I'd still make an exception for that uncle of yours though," Liz said, bumping Yang with her elbow.

"Ew! Liz!" Yang shrieked, shoving Liz away from her so hard that the taller girl almost fell out of her chair.

Liz put on a shit-eating grin as she leaned away from Yang's further attempts to hush her up. "I'm telling you, Yang, I'd let your uncle fuck me bareback in your bed if he asked me."

"No! Shut up! Gross!" Yang cried, covering her ears.

"Gotta admit," Art said, "it's the perfect match. Qrow's the only man who can match her taste for alcohol."

"You guys suck," Yang said, putting her head down on the table.

"So, how's your team been getting along?" Soren asked.

Yang sat back up and sighed. "It's getting better, I guess. Ruby was having a lot of trouble with that Weiss girl at first. I don't think she liked that Ruby got to be team leader instead of her. Ruby said that they worked it out though, and Weiss has been a little easier to talk to the past few days. Hopefully it doesn't turn into an issue."

"What about that other girl? Blake was it?"

Yang frowned. "Yeah. I really don't know what to say about her. She's so quiet, and not like Art-type quiet. Like Ruby when she was twelve and hated everyone and everything quiet. I actually talked to her the night we moved in, before initiation, and I almost wrote her off as just a weird recluse. She didn't even want to talk to us until Ruby asked her what book she was reading. I've tried to start a conversation with her a few times, but she always breaks away as soon as she can without just telling me to fuck off."

"Makes me glad we all wound up together," Brie said, somewhat cruelly, though her tone was still apologetic enough that Yang didn't mind.

"You say that," Liz teased, "but I bet you'd have dropped us in a second to be on a team with Miss Nikos."

Brie blushed and didn't respond.

"You should come hang out at my room sometime," Yang said. "Pyrrha lives right across the hall."

"Really?" Brie half-whispered. "Have you talked with her?"

"We fought with her team in the Emerald Forest. We haven't talked too much since then, but we say hi to each other and stuff."

"Oh, you're so lucky all the time!" Brie groaned. "It's not fair."

"I'm pretty sure she'll talk with you if you asked," Yang said, touching Brie's arm to try to cheer her up. "She's super nice."

"Just try not to fangirl too hard," Liz said.

Brie looked ready to comment back, but she was interrupted when a boy walked up to the table. Yang recognized the scraggly blond boy who'd fucked her here in the library a week earlier. He looked nervous, with his hand rotating between fidgeting in front of him and being stuffed in his pockets, and his attempt at a cocky smile came out looking like a grimace.

"Hey," he said, gaze wandering between Yang and Liz. "Do you girls—remember me?"

"Of course," Yang said, doing her best to keep her eye roll on the inside.

"Keep walking, kid," Liz interrupted. "I know what you're after, and you're wasting your time. We picked you because you were awake, not because you're special. It was a onetime thing, not an invitation to hit us up."

Yang couldn't conceal her smile at that. Good old Liseran, stepping up to take and dish out all the indignation that polite people tried to hide.

"Oh," the boy said, clearly injured, but he didn't leave. "Well—what about one of your lovely friends here?"

The kid had balls if nothing else, all but saying that Art and Brie were second best and still possessing the gall to ask for a date. Yang was almost regretting having let him touch her. Had he directed his last comment towards Briseis, the conversation would have taken a much more serious turn as she and Liz stepped in and did what Briseis wouldn't do herself and told him to back off. But he was looking at Artemisia, so no one said a word, just sat back and watched.

Art looked up from her book for the first time, her eyes scanning from his feet up to his mop of hair. "I'm not friends with these girls," she said, her voice more matronly than normal. "I am a teacher's assistant, and these girls asked me to help them go over what they learned in lecture today. Now, if you please, I'm afraid you're interrupting our study session."

Art must be in a good mood, Yang thought. She was giving him an out. Yang had to admit, Art's outfit fit her story pretty well, and having her textbook open in front of her only added to the image. From what Yang could tell, the boy believed every word.

"Oh, sorry," the boy blathered, but still he lingered.

Was he honestly this desperate, or was he just thick? Yang decided that not only did she regret sleeping with him, she was somewhat disgusted by it. She would ask Soren and Liz if they had time for a romp at any point today so she could cleanse herself of the experience.

Seeing he hadn't left, Art eyed him up again. This time, she raised her eyebrows while she did so, as if seeing him in a new light. "You had some sort of fling with one of these girls, I take it?" she asked. "Looking to go another round?"

The boy turned red, but he nodded. Art raised her book to hide her mouth, as if embarrassed, and Yang nearly burst out laughing as Art somehow managed to make a surge of pink come to her cheeks.

"Hm," she said. "You are rather handsome. Yang, Liseran, is this boy any good?"

"Sure is," Liz said without a moment's hesitation.

"One of the best I've had," Yang added.

"Well then," Art continued, an edge of arousal entering her tone as she stood up and met the boy's gaze dead on. "I suppose I could indulge you, so long as you promise not to tell anyone." She took of her glasses and batted her eyes at him, seductively biting on the earpiece of her spectacles. "Promise?"

If any more blood went to the boy's face, Yang was certain he'd pass out. He nodded so hard that she couldn't believe he didn't.

"Alright," Art purred. She took her bookmark from her book and grabbed a pen before writing a series of letters and number on it before handing it over to him. "That's my room number. I'll be free tonight at eight. Don't be late."

The man cradled the bookmark like it was something sacred, and he nodded again before Art waved him off. They watched him hurry out of the library, and Art sat back down and returned to her book.

"So where'd you send him?" Yang asked, leaning in on her hands.

"Glynda's bedroom," Art replied as if it were obvious.

Liz covered her mouth to keep a raucous snort of laughter from getting them thrown out. Yang could only smile and gape in awe. "How in the world did you manage to find out where Professor Goodwitch sleeps?" she asked.

"A magician never shares her tricks," Art replied, a ghost of a grin on her face.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Soren sat on the foot of his bed, rocking back and forth to the sweet melody of silence, only broken by the occasional crinkling of paper as Liseran flipped over a page in her magazine or the somewhat more frequent slurp as she took a sip from the beer can on the nightstand beside her. Soren broke his vigil of staring at the door and once more checked his Scroll for the time. He was irked to see that scarcely ten minutes had passed since he'd last looked. Clearly his trick of trying to measure time by Liz's sips and page flips wasn't working.

"You know," Liz said as she presumably looked up and saw what he was doing. "You could try reading a book or something. You don't have to just sit there."

"I know," he muttered. "I'm just—being impatient."

"I know we haven't gotten to see Yang as much since we moved in, but it's not like she moved away or anything. In case you've forgotten, you spoke to her an hour ago."

"Yes," he said, finally turning his head to shoot her a look. "But that was in the library, and Art and Brie were there. It's not the same."

Liz gave him a teasing grin. "You're not getting jealous of your own friends now, are you? Have to have your crush all to yourself?"

Soren rolled his eyes and sighed. "It's not like that. I just miss how things were back home."

"D'aww, you're so cute!" Liz said, hopping off her bed and sliding in behind him, her arms coiling around his midsection.

"Hey, don't make fun of me!" he grunted, trying to pull out of her embrace.

"But you're so adorable," she said in baby talk.

"Liz!"

She pressed her lips to his neck and blew a raspberry loud enough make him wince. He grabbed her wrists and forced her arms apart. He tugged her under his arms, trying to hook her neck into his armpit, but she swung her body around until she was kneeling on the ground in front of him. She sprang forward, tackling him back onto the bed. He tried to get free, but she snared his hands with her own, throwing her weight onto him until his arms were pinned to the bedspread. When he attempted to roll against her locked arms, she fell in behind him, and before he realized what was happening, she'd gotten him in a sleeper hold.

"I've wrestled steers a lot more ornery than you," she said, complete with thick, rustic accent.

He grumbled, but he was helpless to escape without hurting her or, more likely, himself. When she realized he was done wrestling, she eased her grip and gently laid his head on her chest while her legs twined with his and their bodies pressed in close to each other.

"You know," she said, "you make a pretty good little spoon."

"Oh, hush," he mumbled, but he closed his eyes and put one of his hands over hers. She interlocked her fingers with his.

The room grew quiet again, now bare of everything but the whisper of Liz's breath in his ear.

"You really love her, don't you?" she asked. Her voice told him she wasn't mocking him anymore.

He cracked his eyes, looking towards the still closed door to their room. "More than anything," he replied.

"Rude thing to say when you're cuddling with someone else," she mumbled, sounding like she was falling asleep.

"You did ask."

"I know," she giggled. "I'm just teasing."

"You're not jealous, are you?"

"I grew up with six siblings," she said, adjusting her position so she could run her fingers through his hair. While Yang loved them most and gave them the best, head rubs had become something of a common courtesy among them. Art said it made them look like a group of monkeys, grooming each other. "When you got that many kids in one house, you learn to share."

"Even things you love?"

Liz made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a scoff. "Just because I loved our dog didn't mean no one else was allowed to. I know you don't think that way, so why bring it up?"

"No reason," he said.

He nestled back into Liz's embrace, being careful not to knock his head against her chin. He could almost hear her pondering, could almost see her eyes wander up the ceiling and hold there until the words she wanted to say dropped down.

"I remember the day I realized my parents had favorites," she said. "Looking back, it should have been obvious that if you put seven kids under one roof, you're going to like some more than others. Hell, I had brothers I hated and sisters I loved and vice versa, but Mom and Pop always said they loved us all equally.

"There were all these little signs that they let slip though. My brother Baxter for example. He's the youngest of the boys, but boy howdy does he try to get into more trouble than my other brothers ever managed in their combined lives. So whenever Baxter starts acting up, Pop brings the hammer down fast and hard. My sister Abby though, she's the baby of the family, my pop would let her get away with murder."

"He didn't do that with you?" Soren asked.

"Hell no! He was a goddamned taskmaster. I was the oldest, so he felt he had to make sure I grew up being able to take over the farm in case he didn't have any more kids. Funny how that went, right? Anyway, he wanted a nice little girl to spoil, a girl who liked pretty dresses and dolls, and I grew up rough-and-tumble, slinging mud and fists with the neighbor's kids. To Pop, I wasn't much different from a boy.

"My mom, on the other hand, loved me the most. She had two miscarriages before me, and the doctors weren't sure I'd make it. So I was the miracle child, the proof that she could do it. Sometimes I think I was the confidence boost she needed, because my brothers and sisters all popped out healthy as colts."

Soren smiled. "So what are you trying to tell me?"

"That love isn't finite. I could have been angry when I realized Pop loved Abby more than me, but I understood that wasn't the same as not loving me at all. We can't help how we feel, but we can at least respect how others feel. So no, I'm not jealous. Half my clothes originally belonged to someone else, and half of everything I've ever bought belongs to someone else now. I'm fine sharing you with Yang, and I'm fine sharing her with you. I just want to make sure you're not trying to keep someone like her to yourself."

"I don't want her all to myself," he sighed.

"Then what are you upset about?"

He paused again. How could he explain himself? Even if he had the words, would Liseran even be able to understand? "It's just—whenever I'm away from her…"

"What?"

He was wondering how he might answer her when there came a knock. He lifted his head to see the door open and Yang enter. She was still in her school uniform, which he and Liz had long since changed out of. It was always interesting, seeing her wearing it. It wasn't like anything she wore normally, and there hadn't been a uniform at Signal. Still, she looked like she belonged in it, which he supposed he would have said regardless of what she wore. Sophistication fit her as well as playfulness and licentiousness, and he couldn't decide which he liked best, if it were even possible to choose. It would have been like picking a favorite facet of a perfectly cut diamond: arbitrary and only capable of detracting from the beauty of the whole.

A smirk crawled up Yang's lips as she shut the door and saw the two of them on the bed. She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at them. "What are you two up to?" she asked.

"Talking about how much we love you," Liz answered without missing a beat.

Yang gave them a suspicious look, but Soren just nodded that, indeed, that was what they had been discussing. Yang shrugged and walked around them to sit on Liz's bed beside Soren's, he and Liz breaking their cuddle session to turn and face her.

"Almost forgot out rooms started like this," Yang said, looking around their little dwelling. "You guys should set up bunk beds like we did."

"It's a lot harder to have sex in a bunk bed," Liz said.

"And a lot easier to break your neck," Soren commented, remembering the one glimpse he'd had of the haphazard setup Yang and her team had erected in their bedroom.

"Fair," Yang said before sighing and falling back on Liz's bed, her arms stretched wide.

"So, your text said you needed 'sexual healing'?" Liz asked.

"Yeah. After dealing with that creep today, I'm feeling sorry I ever so much as talked to him."

Liz grunted in agreement. "Well, I can probably convince Art and Brie to give us an hour or two. I've got beer to get me loosened up, so what do you say we get this started?"

Yang sat up, looking more chipper already. "Sounds great. While you clear things with Art, me and Soren can get started."

Soren smirked. "Gladly," he said.

Liz got up and moved to her bed beside Yang, the fingers of her right hand typing on her Scroll while her left reached for her beer. Yang rose and sashayed towards Soren's bed, her arms held behind her back.

"So," she cooed, "I've been in this stuffy outfit all day. Care to unwrap me?"

"My pleasure," he said.

Feeling brash, he activated his Semblance, stretching his telekinetic influence towards Yang's jacket. The garment lurched forward on her body, making her stumble and nearly yanking her onto the bed. She recovered her balance, however, and she looked down to see her jacket tug forward several times without coming undone.

Soren glowered at her stomach and then at his hands. "Fucking still can't do buttons," he grumbled.

Yang giggled. "Let me help," she said.

Her hips began to sway, her fingers creeping across her torso until they reached the buttons of her jacket. She undid each one before sliding the garment down her arms and dropping it to the floor. Her large breasts protruded over the top of her vest, her white shirt pulled taut against them. Yang never wore a bra, and he could see the outline of her areola through the straining fabric.

She turned her back to him, her hips still moving more hypnotically than a magician's watch. The vest came next, joining her jacket on the floor. She turned towards him and dipped forward, face hovering inches above his lap before coming back and letting her tease him with the possibility of a kiss that was gone before he could take it. Her fingers began to work on her shirt, each one revealing another inch of her torso, first her neckline, then her collarbone, then her cleavage for the next three buttons, and finally the subtle outline of her six-pack.

She showed him her back again before she slipped the garment from her shoulders, the motion causing her gorgeous locks of hair to tumble. She didn't drop the shirt yet, instead letting it linger across her back as her torso joined the sway of her waistline, her body gyrating like a snake to the charmer's pipe. Liz had taken a seat on the edge of the bed across from Soren, giving her a full view of Yang's front. The farm girl was taking a sip from her beer every few seconds, and she looked like she hadn't blinked for several minutes.

Yang began to spin her shirt like a dancer with a sash, revealing the thin straps of her purple lace thong that peeked up above her waist. She spun back to Soren, giving him, at last, a view of her divine figure. She kicked off her shoes and straddled his lap, throwing her shirt around the back of his neck and pulling his face towards hers. He wrapped his arms around her narrow middle, squeezing the two of them together as he pressed his lips to hers. They'd been short for time the night they had moved in, so he hadn't gotten to savor a kiss with her.

He closed his eyes, focusing on the feeling, how their tongues danced, how her hips kept moving against his, how her skin felt under his hands. Her midsection was solid, but her skin was softer than his bedclothes, the twin textures like ambrosia to the touch. His hands roamed her body, exploring the different sensations. Her arms, taut and firm; her ass, where muscle was cushioned by the perfect amount of fat; and her chest, the only part of her besides her hair that was simply softness, save for the two hardening nubs at their centers. All the while, he sampled the feeling of her tongue on his own, against his lips and the inside of his cheeks.

His touch coaxed her closer, their forms pressed together so tightly. His shirt now felt like a wall between him and paradise, but he didn't want to pull away from her long enough to remove it. She clearly didn't have the same patience, however, and her hands were soon up the back of his shirt, working it up his chest without the two of them parting. At last however, it was inevitable that their kiss had to break for her to pull the shirt over his head, and they each gasped for breath as if they'd been underwater.

He reached up her skirt, hooking his thumbs into the straps of her thong and pulling down. She had to stand before he could divest her of them entirely, the underwear adding to the growing pile of clothing on the floor. She was making to remove her skirt, but he grabbed her wrists.

"Leave that and the stockings," he said with a wink.

"Kinky," she said, chuckling.

The sound of something wet, drew their attention to Liseran's bed. Liz was seated so close to the edge of her bed that it was surprising she hadn't slid off. She'd undressed entirely, aside from her panties, and one of her hands was busy plundering the depths of that last garment, the other still clutching her beer, which she was practically chugging at this point.

"You guys are fucking hot," she muttered, still looking like she hadn't blinked.

Yang laughed. Soren would have joined her, but the sight of her beaming face made him forget to. "Liz," he said. "Give us some mood lighting, please."

Liz groaned a complaint, but she drained the last of her drink and reluctantly removed her hand from her underwear. She strode for the door and dimmed the lights, casting the room in a sunset glow. Yang, who still had her arms around his waist, looked into his eyes and gave him a smile more tender than sensual. He could tell the same memories that were running through his mind right now were running through hers as well. She leaned in and hugged him, just a hug, but one he was happy to return.

"Go ahead and lay down," she whispered as she pulled away.

He did as she bid, and she helped him out of his pants. Everything felt the way it had their first time. Artemisia wasn't there, and the ambient light had been from the actual sunset outside his bedroom window, but between the two of them, the motions were the same. As Yang lay on top of him and leaned in for a kiss, he closed his eyes, and the darkness became that day again, when they had become one for the first time.

#

 _Soren, Yang, Liz, and Art had been fifteen at the time, and they had been sitting on the front porch of Soren's house, watching the sun go down and wash the world in golden light. Soren's father had been out on business and wouldn't be back until late that evening. Brie had been called home by her parents, a normal occurrence on a school night, leaving the four of them to their own devices._

 _Yang had gotten up from the porch swing she was sharing with Liz and declared she had to use the restroom. Liz and Art had offered to join her, and while Soren had found that suspicious, he hadn't said anything. He had been alone on the porch for a few minutes, his mind wandering back to the pretty view he had from the rocking chair, until the front door had opened and Art stepped back outside. Rather than returning to her seat, she had grabbed him by the sleeve._

 _"Come inside," she'd said. "I have to show you something."_

 _He'd asked what, but she'd refused to tell him. She'd responded similarly when he'd asked her to let him go, just dragging him by the arm back into the house. She'd led him upstairs to his bedroom, where Yang and Liz had been waiting. Yang had had her cocky smile on, while Liz had looked nervous, her cheeks reddening as he'd walked in the door._

 _Yang had leapt up onto his bed and pointed at him, her other hand placed imperiously on her hip. "Soren Glaux!" she'd said, sounding like she was making a speech. "Prepare yourself!"_

 _As she spoke, Art stepped behind him, slipped her arms under his, and locked his shoulders. Yang waved Liz towards the door._

 _"Shut the door," she'd ordered. "Make sure he can't escape."_

 _Liz had done so, looking a bit ashamed of herself as she did so. It was only when she twisted the lock that Soren had suspected something unusual was happening._

 _"What are you guys doing?" he'd asked._

 _"Naughty stuff," Art had said in his ear, she'd actually sounded embarrassed. He hadn't thought her capable of that emotion, or really any emotion, but in spite of the vigor in her hold, he could feel her arms quivering._

 _"What—do you mean?" he'd asked._

 _Yang had hopped down from the bed and put her hands behind her back as she meandered towards him, her head lolling back and forth but never looking at him. "You know," she said coyly, "adult stuff, like this."_

 _As she'd said it, she'd darted in and pecked him on the lips. He remembered the enormity of the heat that had washed over his face. The kiss had been over before he'd even realized what had happened, but he'd never in his wildest dreams thought he'd be given that much. If Art hadn't been holding him up, he'd wondered if he would have swooned._

 _"Alright," Yang had said, "it's your turn, Liz."_

 _Liz had looked like she was trying not to be sick. She'd been rubbing her arms since she'd closed the door, and when she'd approached Soren, she'd seemed unable to bring herself to look at him. They'd been about the same height back then, but she'd still seemed uncertain of how to move in, what to do with her hands. Finally, however, she'd leaned in and kissed him. He hadn't closed his eyes, she'd caught him so off guard, letting him see how tightly she shut her own, as if she'd been a child who'd had to will herself to jump off the high dive. Once it had begun, however, the unease had melted from her face, leaving her lost in sensation. Unlike Yang's quick smooch, Liz had lingered for a while, her hands rising to caress his face._

 _When she'd finally pulled away, she'd had a dreamy look on her face, any anxiety she'd displayed earlier now washed away. She'd been smiling when Yang had pushed past her to have another go._

 _"Wanna try something cool?" Yang had asked him._

 _He hadn't been able to speak, only swallow what felt like a boulder in his throat and nod._

 _"Open your mouth, and close your eyes…" she'd said, letting the rest of the rhyme drop._

 _He'd done so, and then he'd felt her tongue pushing past his lips. He'd done his best to mimic her motions, their tongues circling each other's like the coils of a rope. When she had ultimately pulled away, a trail of spit had momentarily linked them a few moments longer._

 _"Wanna do something_ really _cool?" she'd asked, that same dreamy expression on Liz's face now appearing on hers._

 _He'd nodded again, worried that if his heart drew any higher into his throat, he'd choke._

 _Yang had lowered herself onto her knees, nuzzling her cheeks against his body as she went, until she had been kissing the front of his pants, which had been growing tighter and tighter as arousal had set in. She'd unbuckled his belt and tossed it across the room. He remembered that the sound of the metal buckle banging against the wall had somehow felt significant, like a gong signifying the start of a great battle._

 _He remembered how embarrassed he'd felt as she pulled his pants and boxers down, revealing that he was already painfully hard. Yang hadn't looked ashamed, however. She'd just smirked, an expression she'd never worn before. Normally she was all wide-eyes and smiles, but then, her eyelids had been low and one corner of her mouth rakishly turned up. It had made her look older, made her face look sharper, dangerous. It was a look he'd come to know well, but back then, it had been almost frightening._

 _She'd looked him straight in the eye when she leaned in and kissed the tip of his cock, earning a muffled squeak from Liz. "Are you really going to put that in your mouth?" she'd asked._

 _Yang had turned to her and said, "You've never heard of a blowjob before? I know you watch porn, so don't lie."_

 _Liz's face had grown as red as the shirt she was wearing. "Of course I have, but—isn't it, like, dirty?"_

 _"Tastes fine to me," Yang had said, her voice gaining a sultry edge that matched her obscene expression as she had leaned in placed another kiss on his shaft. "Come on and give it a shot."_

 _Liz had hesitated, but a mixture of curiosity and peer pressure had roped her in, and a moment later, she had been on her knees alongside Yang. Just like it had been with the kisses on his mouth, they started short and quick, gradually becoming longer and harder. Just like before, Yang had been the first to move on to using her tongue, swirling it around the head as Liz continued running her lips along his length. Then Liz had joined in the licking, and Soren had gone limp in Artemisia's arms, the occasional spasm of pleasure occasionally making her adjust her footing. He hadn't been able to see Art's face with her still binding his arms, but her breath on his cheek and ear had grown faster and faster, and she'd begun grinding her hips against the back of his thigh._

 _Soren had felt like screaming as the two beauties lapped at his cock, but just when he'd felt like he was going to explode, Yang had grabbed Liz and pulled her away. Liz had had that lost expression on her face again, a line of drool painting a stream from the corner of her mouth to her chin. Her daze fell away, however, as Yang grabbed her face and kissed her. Liz's eyes had shot open, and Soren had heard Art gasp into his ear. Liz has fallen back against the foot of the bed, but Yang had followed. The kiss had been domineering, perhaps too hard, as if Yang had been trying to tongue-fuck her throat, but inexperienced as they both had been, Liz had hardly been able appreciate the difference._

 _Yang had pulled away, leaving Liz a panting, sloppy-mouthed mess. She'd stood and whirled back to Soren, her face now one of electric excitement. "Want to see me naked?" she'd asked._

 _Soren had felt as if all the color had drained from his face, though he was sure the actual effect had been quite the opposite. Yang hadn't waited for an answer to that one, stripping off her shirt without a second's hesitation. When she had completely undressed, she'd paused, standing there for him to admire. He'd never recalled feeling so torn. She was baring every inch of herself to him. Her breasts, while still a full cup size from where they'd be by the time they came to Beacon, had still been bigger than most of the woman he'd ever seen, and they then, as now, had maintained a perky look while still retaining a sense of weight. Her body had been, as now, hairless. The sunlight through the window had painted shadows across her, defining every muscle on her body._

 _In spite of that, he had been almost loathe to look away from her face and the new and tempting expressions it kept showing him. For the first time since he'd been dragged here, she had seemed almost nervous. "Well?" she'd asked after who-knows-how-long he'd been gawking at her. "What do you think?"_

 _It had taken all his effort to finally clear his throat, and even then his voice had cracked as he'd said, "You're beautiful."_

 _She'd broken out beaming, the first familiar expression she'd worn since she'd first kissed him. She'd rushed up and pressed her nude body against his, kissing him again and giggling._

 _"Art," she'd said, "help me get his shirt off."_

 _Art had only released one arm at a time, as if anything in the world would have made him want to run away at this point, but Yang had finally gotten him naked by the end of it. "Let's get onto the bed," Yang had said._

 _They'd situated themselves so that Art had her back pressed to the headboard, with Soren still locked in her arms. Yang had straddled his hips, while Liz had crawled, groggily, onto the foot of the bed and lay there, watching. In their new positions, Soren had barely been able to see anything of Yang through her ample bosom, and she had quickly caught him staring._

 _"If you want," she'd said, "you can kiss them."_

 _He'd wanted that very much. Deprived of the ability to touch them with his hands, he'd worked his mouth double, kissing and nuzzling her soft flesh and sucking her nipples into his mouth, oftentimes too harshly, and by the end, her breasts had borne a number of little hickeys. Each time he'd left one and made her moan, he'd felt like lightning had struck him square in the heart._

 _She'd been gasping for breath by the end, but her eyes had been lost in a golden haze, her mouth still turning upwards. When she'd found herself again, she'd pressed their chests together and put her lips to the ear Art's wasn't. She'd embraced him around the shoulders, his cock pressed against her firm belly._

 _"Soren," she'd whispered, "I want to make love to you."_

 _It would be hours afterwards before he would be certain that he hadn't died and gone to heaven at the sound of those words. "I want you too," he'd replied, barely conscious that he'd spoken._

 _She'd pulled back just enough to look into his eyes. There had been so many emotions on her face in that moment: lust and desperation, of course, but there were other things as well. Things like joy and fierceness, fear too, but not enough to overcome her anticipation. "You'll be a man after this," she'd said, though she'd sounded more like a child than she had at any other point that day._

 _They hadn't had any protection, but neither were in the state of mind to care. She'd taken his length in her hands, breathed deep, and slowly lowered herself onto him. It had felt like sliding into a volcano, plunging into liquid heat that swallowed and stuck to him without burning. Her eyes had fluttered and squinched at first, as if in pain, but as she'd finally taken the last inch of him, she'd shuddered and gasped, her eyes rolling back for a moment as her gaping mouth became a grin._

 _He'd slid down as she rode him, until he'd been flat on his back with his head on Art's lap while Yang bounced on top of him, her breasts jumping and falling with each motion as he'd melted into bliss. Yang, on the other hand, had seemed to be soaring higher and higher with every second, her expression and yips of ecstasy filling the room. Art had stared at them in dumbstruck awe, her hands cupping Soren's face. Liz had shoved one hand down her pants and slapped the other over her mouth in a vain attempt to mask her moans._

 _"I'm gonna cum," Yang had gasped as she'd grabbed his hands and intertwined their fingers, so light of breath that the sound seemed to come from far away. She'd gasped it several times more as her hips and bucked faster and faster, pulling his mind farther and farther away as he drowned in the feeling of her._

 _"Yang!" he'd barely managed to call out as the last vestige of reason threatened to depart from him._

 _Luckily, she'd understood and lifted her hips so that he plopped out of her depths, an instant before he shot his load over his stomach, more than he'd ever released while watching porn. The feeling of him pulling out of her had apparently been enough to send Yang over the edge as well, as she had remained poised over him, her eyelids fluttering like someone trying to wake from a dream and her mouth wide in a scream that produced no sound. At last, they'd both gone limp, their breathing going from quick and harsh to long and slow._

 _Yang had collapsed onto him, gripping his shoulders as she laid her head on his chest. "That was amazing," she'd whispered, a sentiment he would have agreed with if he'd felt capable of speech._

 _When she'd regained her composure, she'd sat up and wiped up the sperm that had gotten on her waist. She'd fanned her hand, looking at the white ropes that stuck to her fingers before popping her fingers into her mouth one by one and sucking them clean. Liz had looked aghast, but Yang had turned to her and said, "It tastes good. Try it."_

 _Liz had hesitated, so Yang had scooped another wad onto her finger and held it in front of Liz's face. Liz had blushed, but with halting motions and another grimace, she'd opened her mouth and wrapped her lips around Yang's finger. Yang hadn't pulled away until she was sure Liz had gotten every drop. Liz had swallowed loudly enough to hear, and a moment later she'd gagged._

 _"More for me," Yang had said with a shrug._

 _She had crawled up the bedspread until her face was flush with Soren's crotch. She hadn't been daring enough to lick the cum off of him, but she'd collected it on her fingers and sucked them clean until there was nothing left but a few specks of spittle on his belly._

 _If it had stopped there, Soren still would have considered it the most magical moment of his life, but Yang hadn't been finished. Now it was supposed to be Liz's turn. After cleaning Soren off in the bathroom and laying out some towels so as not to soil the sheets, Yang had helped Liz strip and guided her into the same position before helping her lower herself onto Soren's cock. Soren had been able to tell that it hurt, and he'd been afraid he'd done something wrong. But Yang had told them that it would stop hurting if Liz relaxed and that there was nothing to be afraid of. Soren had cum again before Liz could, Yang making sure that he pulled out beforehand, and Yang had rubbed Liz's clit to get her off as well._

 _After another round of cleaning, it had been Art's turn. She had been too shy to ride him herself, and though Soren had been sweating as if he'd run a marathon, he'd forced himself to sit up and take his position over her. Her breasts had been so small compared to Yang and Liz, would never be particularly large at all, but he'd sucked on them just the same to get her worked up. Yang had instructed him the whole way, telling him how he needed to make sure she was wet so it wouldn't hurt as much and to take things slow._

 _He had been the one to thrust inside this time, her thin legs spread wide and her teeth clenched. He'd done his best to be gentle, Yang coaching his movement and whispering encouragement while Liz held Art's hand. This time, it was Soren who didn't cum. With Yang guiding him on how to play with Art's breasts and clit, the mousy girl achieved a shuddering orgasm before his flagging endurance could reach its end._

 _He'd fallen onto his haunches on the bed, pulling out of Art with a wet pop. Yang had splayed out on her stomach in front of him, her large tits expanding out from her chest like a pair of squished balloons. She'd grabbed the towel and used a clean corner to wipe him off. Then, she'd taken his cock in her hand and tugged, jerking him off until he'd finally succumbed and ejaculated for the third time that day. She'd closed her eyes and aimed him at her face, streams of white painting her pretty features. When he'd finished, she'd opened her eyes and smiled at him._

 _Afterwards, once they'd all cleaned off and calmed down, they'd lain naked together in the fading light of the sunset, the room changing from gold to pink to purple. He'd passed out not long after and awoken hours later, alone and fully clothed, in bed, when his father got home. He might have thought the whole thing a dream were it not for the damp towels he'd found in his bathroom._

 _He'd thought a bit about it then and many times since, but no matter how it troubled him, he told himself it didn't matter. He knew it didn't matter, and he'd never once asked Yang about it, but that day he'd realized, should have expected considering how in control she'd been, that this hadn't been the first time Yang had done something like that._


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Yang groaned, digging her fingernails into Soren's chest, as she dropped her hips one last time and came around his cock. His hands on her breasts squeezed, sending signals of discomfort and pleasure both into her brain, and she knew he wasn't far behind her. She raised her pelvis, gasping as he slipped out of her, and scuttled back until she could take him into her mouth. The taste of his skin, precum, and her own juices formed a cocktail on her tongue. She noted the pun and savored the flavor as she plunged her head up and down, sucking the cum from his dick like a stubborn milkshake through a straw.

At last, he moaned and put a hand to her head, and his semi-sweet ejaculate filled her mouth. She sighed happily through her nose, pulling off his lap slowly so as not to spill a thing, and when he finally emerged from her lips, nothing was left clinging to his length but a thin layer of her saliva. She'd always had a bit of an odd taste when it came to flavors (another pun; she was on a roll), but it was a bit odd to her how much she loved the taste of cum. The texture needed work, but she wasn't about to give it up for that, especially with someone whose flavor she enjoyed as much as Soren's.

She swished it around her mouth, feeling it stick to her teeth like jelly, before looking over at Liz. The farm girl was hazy and in the first stages of being drunk, as evidenced by the third beer can she was now finishing. Her panties had been discarded long ago, and her fingers were just now slowing from their assault on her insides as she too came down from her orgasm. Yang pointed at her own mouth.

"Yes, please," Liz grunted, standing somewhat shakily up from the bed.

Yang did the same and practically tackled Liz back onto the sheets. She planted her open lips over Liz's, a torrent of semen spilling into Liz's mouth. They swapped the load back and forth, tongues pushing and dropping it, until Yang sucked it back out and ended the kiss long enough to swallow it. Liz liked the taste but still couldn't swallow without gagging, so Yang had taught herself how to retrieve what was hers after Liz had gotten a sampling.

"Feeling better?" Soren asked.

Yang looked back over her shoulder, still crouched over Liz's shivering body like a vampire and her victim. "Nope," she purred, wiggling her rump. "You have to cleanse every part of me."

Soren raised an eyebrow at her. "I don't recall you letting him back there."

"So? I'm on my knees, begging you to take me in the ass, and you're really going to say no?"

Soren cocked his head. "You got me there."

"Mind letting me out first?" Liz said, brushing her fingers up and down Yang's arms.

"Only if you promise to get back under me soon," Yang said, resting her forehead on Liz's.

Liz likewise arched her brow, though her lips rose with it. "You're feeling feisty tonight."

Yang grinned and nipped her lightly on the nose before lifting her own arm and leg so Liz could roll out from under her. As she lowered her limbs, she released a little gasp as Soren swatted her ass. Her Semblance had always made pain play a kink of hers, and the sting rippling through her backside reignited the fire in her core. She bit her lip and moaned as Soren sank his fingers into the flesh of her butt, coaxing her hips down until she was lying prone and in position for him to massage her. His thumbs sought the center of her cheeks and pushed down, loosening her muscles and causing her body to relax.

Her moans became a hushed hum as he kneaded her thighs and lower back. The bed squeaked as Liz hopped back onto it, and Yang shuddered as something cold splashed across her ass. She looked over her shoulder to see Liz squeeze a bottle of lube, the thin stream of clear liquid falling onto her anus, only for Soren to swipe it up and rub it into her skin.

"You want to grab a towel?" Yang asked. "You're gonna stain your sheets."

Liz shrugged. "They need cleaning anyway. Maybe I'll leave it for a night, wake up tomorrow smelling like I just got back from an orgy."

"Sexy," Yang chuckled.

The laugh turned to a whimper as Soren began swirling his thumb over her asshole, varying the pressure and teasing penetration. Lying on her stomach he way she was, her clit was pressed against the bedclothes, the twin stimulations putting butterflies in her stomach.

"Oh, baby," she cooed, her breath hitching in her chest. "Mmm, let me get on top of you."

The subtle touches on her body ceased, and she rose to her knees. Soren resituated the pillows to give himself a headrest before lying down and letting Yang straddled his face. She felt him adjust the long locks of her hair out of his eyes, though even that would leave him with little sight beyond the swell of her ass and the golden backdrop behind it.

"I'll get you nice and wet for me," she said.

Liz took the bottle of lube and upended it onto Yang's chest, the slick liquid cascading over the curves of her breasts, where Liz's free hand was waiting to massage it in. Below her waist, Soren was eating her out and just now pushing his middle finger into her anus, and above, the feeling of the lines of Liz's hand catching on the bumps of her nipples was setting her breath on fire.

When her tits were as slick as wet soap, Yang leaned forward and enveloped Soren's length in her cleavage. His penis was warm from arousal and the furnace of her vagina, and she could feel each twitch ripple through her chest. She groped herself, pushing her mounds up and down, sometimes at the same time, sometimes alternating one or the other. She felt the shift in his breathing as her ministrations continued, as the squeaks and squelches from her slippery breasts milked him back to the height of arousal. Her own lungs seemed unable to form a tempo as he slipped a second finger past her sphincter, scissoring the digits to stretch and probe her deeper.

"Oh God, Soren, I'm so fucking ready," she groaned, her hips wiggling to pull him deeper into her ass.

She crawled forward so he could sit up and slide out from under her, and she remained on all fours as he positioned himself behind her. He sandwiched his cock between her cheeks, thrusting his shaft into the crevice of her ass, his rigid length rubbing against her anus.

"Don't tease," she practically begged. "Please, give me that raw cock in my asshole."

"I still don't see how you enjoy it that much," Liz said from across the room, fumbling with something that Yang couldn't see.

"You're just jealous of how hard I cum when I…" Yang began before Soren placed his cockhead against her rear entrance and pushed. "Ohmygod…" she breathed.

She loved this feeling. No matter how much lube or prep work they did, that first push always felt like a losing battle, like trying to push through a brick wall with a toothpick. Her ass always seemed too impossibly tight, that first push never anything more than pressure that made her skin sink in but never falter. Then she'd breathe out and relax every muscle in her body, and the second push would open her like a flower in the morning sun.

She shuddered at that first moment of penetration as his cock pushed against the deeper rings of muscle within, exposing them to the streams of lube trickling into her and loosening them. It was such an odd sensation at the start, with tightness in her bowels, of course, but also in her throat, as if she'd just woken up from a bad dream. Then, as she reached a hand back to spread her cheeks open and let him hilt inside, the lump in her windpipe would dissolve, along with all the rest of the tension in her body.

Then he'd pull back, and the cycle would play out in reverse. She loved that feeling even more: that curiously pleasant sense of being pulled inside out. It was strongest right at the end, just as he slipped out of her, as her body instinctively contracted to push him out, only for him to deny her and push back in. It was never this intense when she fingered her asshole, or even if she used a dildo, so she took every moment she had to appreciate the decadence of it.

When she had loosened up enough that he didn't have to be so gentle, he started thrusting in earnest, each stab clapping his hips against her backside as he bottomed out in her ass (a third pun; jackpot). It felt so much deeper than being fucked in her pussy, as if she could envelop him entirely within her and still have room to spare, and yet she never felt fuller than when she had someone pounding her rectum. Rather than the heavy breathing she'd displayed while she'd been riding him earlier, her voice now escaped in soft grunts and gasps, as if someone had shoved her against a wall. He would thrust in, teasing a new depth, and she'd exhale as if she'd held her breath for an hour, and he'd pull out, making her gasp at the sudden emptiness.

"You're sounding pretty ragged there," she heard Liz say from across the vast distance of three feet away. "Sure you can handle more?"

Yang raised her head to see Liz standing at the foot of the bed. The tall girl had a black harness around her waist, attached to a six inch purple dildo aimed at Yang's face. Yang turned up her lips and bared her teeth. She knew she looked fierce, even in as compromising a position as she was. Her body glistened with sweat, the moisture making a tangled thicket of her hair, and her muscles were flexed and rippling like a prowling tiger. Her breath may be that of tired prey, but she still had the eyes of a predator, which she turned on Liz like a searchlight on an escaped prisoner.

"Stop stalling," she said, a seductive request underlain by a command.

She pushed herself up so that she was on her knees, leaning back against Soren's chest and folding her arms behind his head. Her tits were thrust forward, still shiny from the lube Liz had rubbed on them, and she kept rolling her hips with Soren still buried inside her. She could feel him shake as she asserted control, his hands flying from her hips to her chest. She looked down at her body, enjoying the myriad ways her breasts were contorted by his touch, and then she looked back at Liz and beckoned to her with one finger.

The flush on Liz's face grew brighter, and she practically jumped onto the bed and situated herself with her legs out straight between Yang's spread thighs. Liz's height meant that, once her pelvis was in line with Yang's, her head was still hanging off the edge of the bed. Right were Yang wanted her. Yang lowered herself, taking hold of Liz's plastic cock. It was slick with lube, and Yang wasted no time in guiding it to her pussy. She dropped her hips hard enough to slam the harness down on Liz's clit, causing the taller girl to gasp. Liz's hands flew to Yang's ass cheeks, where they clasped down with desperate fervor, while Soren grasped Yang's shoulders and drove into her asshole with renewed vigor.

Yang practically growled her satisfaction. There was nothing in the world she loved more than double penetration. The sensory overload, the indescribable fullness, the way everything south of her waist turned to mush while her spine bent like a longbow and tension coiled up her arms like chains. The heat of two bodies pressed against either side of her, the firmness of Soren at her back and the softness of her huge breasts resting atop Liz's, all the different sensations stealing away her breath and sending frantic waves of pleasure into her brain. She licked her lips and fought not to scream too loudly, lest the rest of the hallway hear, though the thought of the neighbors enviously listening in drove her even more wild.

Best of all, however, was experiencing Soren and Liz. Soren was like a man pinned beneath a boulder, movements becoming more intense and spasmodic as he realized he was trapped in his own ecstasy with no will to escape. Liz was like a virgin boy being fucked for the first time, anxious and malleable, with hands wandering for both purchase and a pleasurable touch. Liz's position on the bed also left her with the difficult choice of letting her head roll back, forcing all her blood and the alcohol that polluted it to rush to her head, or lift her neck and leave her face buried in Yang's cleavage, an equally invigorating experience. She chose the latter, smothering a nipple with her mouth and doing her best to nip and suckle without letting her approaching orgasm make her lose control.

Yang might feel in that moment like all the matter in her body was turning to energy, but she had them. Liz, no doubt due to the beer, came first. She flung her arms around Yang's shoulders and croaked out Yang's name without bothering to remove the titty from her mouth. Yang was on the verge, but she felt Soren was too.

"Give it to me, baby," she crooned, flexing and relaxing to make her rectal muscles dance around his cock. "Shoot all your cum inside my asshole!"

The porn star talk did the trick, and she shattered before the torrential wave of her orgasm as the feeling of liquid fire shot into her bowels with each spurt of cum inside her. Her hips kept bucking even when she stopped thinking about it, her ass milking Soren's dick for every last drop of white lava. Soren fell back against the headboard, his breathing as shaky as someone in shock. Yang almost came again just from the feeling of him sliding out of her ass, followed by a warm trickle as his cum leaked from her flexing hole and dribbled down her clenched thighs. She let herself down gently, Liz half-heartedly pulling her into an embrace. Yang released a weak chuckle and kissed the tall girl on the cheek.

"If you think I'm done with you two yet," Yang whispered loud enough for both of them to hear, "you're in for a painful night."

The look that passed over Liz's face was somewhat akin to fear. Yang cast a glance over her shoulder to see a similar expression on Soren's face. Yang just smiled.

#

Yang breathed a contented sigh. After convincing Brie and Art via text to give them another few hours alone, Yang had fucked both Liz and Soren into oblivion, Liz literally so. The farm girl was back in her own bed, fast asleep, her naked back facing Yang and Soren, who were spooning on his bed. She wiggled her butt against her groin as she settled into a more comfortable position. She might have been offended that nothing stirred against her backside if she hadn't been the one to wear it out so completely. Soren was hovering between sleep and wakefulness, one hand thrown around her and clasped over one of her breasts.

She checked the clock by the bedside. It was getting late, the sky beyond the window all but black. It wouldn't be long before Art and Brie got back, and the tender moment would have to end.

"We should get dressed," she whispered so as not to disturb Liz. "I should get back."

Soren made a dissenting grunt and pulled her closer.

"Soren, it's late."

"Stay," he mumbled groggily.

Yang felt herself choke up, and the tranquility of the moment faded into the background. The hushed lighting reminded her less of a sunset and more of a seedy hotel room. She placed her hand over the one he held against her breast.

"Soren," she said.

She could tell he heard the shift in her voice because he stirred back to wakefulness, lifting his head so he could see more of her face. Without fully meaning to, she turned her gaze towards the sheets, away from his eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

How could she answer that question? What could she say that wouldn't hurt him, that wouldn't rip apart the closeness they shared? It was such a difficult question because she wasn't entirely certain of the answer herself. She couldn't let it linger though. She knew no good would come from allowing her fears to fester.

"Have you ever thought about—seeing other girls?" she asked.

"What?" He sounded either concerned or upset.

She sighed and pulled his hand away so she could roll over. He deserved to be looked in the eyes for this. "Soren—you know I care about you…" she trailed off, unsure of how to speak further.

"But?"

"I'm not in love with you, and you deserve someone who is. I can't just be with you. You know I enjoy our time together, but sometimes I wish you would find someone else instead of pursuing me."

He was looking at her like she was speaking gibberish, as if she were whispering secrets he couldn't hope to comprehend. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be here," he said. "I owe you every happy memory I've ever had. If not for you, I might not even be alive."

"You know I don't like it when you say that," she breathed, his every word sinking like a needle into her heart.

She rolled onto her back and craned her neck away, towards Liz, but he cupped her chin with gentle fingers and turned her face back to him. "You don't have to like it," he said. "But it's true. I owe you my life. You may not love me the way I love you. Even if you did, I'd never ask you to change for me. I fell in love with you exactly as you are, and if that involves watching you chase other men and women, then that's fine."

"But it's not fair," she said. "I know you enjoy it when we do things like this or on the night we moved in, but don't lie to me and say that you wouldn't be fine being with only me."

He opened his mouth to retort, but closed it again without a word. She knew he had nothing to say because she was right.

"Don't you see how wrong that is?" she asked. "Even if I did decide to be with you, I wouldn't be satisfied with just that. It's just not in my nature."

He looked away from her and sighed, his eyes resting on the far wall. She could see the gears turning in his head, his thoughts ever and always on his sleeve. He made several attempts to turn back to her, each time catching himself before he finally seemed to know what to say.

"When I was young," he said, "I wanted to be the kind of person who brightened people's day just by walking into the room. I wanted my name to be enough to make someone smile. But growing up, I realized I just wasn't that kind of person. I barely knew how to talk to them, much less make them happy. I was too dark, a moon that wanted to be a star.

"But you, Yang… The first time I saw you, all the hopes I thought I'd lost blazed back to life. You are sunlight, and in the sun, even a lifeless stone in space can shine bright enough to illuminate the night. I don't care if you never sleep with me again. I would miss it, of course, and if you never spoke to me again, I'd suffer, but I wouldn't complain. Just so long as I can be close to you, as long as I can keep shining, then that's enough for me."

Yang stared into his eyes, unsure of whether she should blush or cry. He was as fierce in his love as she was in her lust. She loved him so much, but it was still a pale mockery of his devotion to her. She wasn't sure there was anything she could ask of him that he wouldn't do, and if there were, it wouldn't be something she would want anyway. She knew that if she asked him, he would climb a mountain for her, would disappear from her life like a ghost if she begged him to. He might plead or weep, but he would make himself her slave if he thought she wanted it of him. Couldn't he see how much she just wanted him to be free, see how his happiness meant more to her than his affection?

She didn't blush or cry. She sighed and hugged him tight, laying her head across his chest, the thin layer of dark hair tickling her cheek. She could give him a few minutes more before she would get dressed and leave him there to clutch his pillow close as a feeble replacement for her body, no doubt to dream that she was his and his alone.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Blake finished buttoning up the jacket of her uniform. The past few weeks had been an interesting series of adventures. Nothing quite as intense as the battle with that Nevermore during initiation, but that was probably a good thing. There had been the perils of dealing with new roommates, the constant battle between Weiss's standards of order and cleanliness and Ruby's reckless organizational anarchy. Speeches had often been made from both sides, each one delivered with all the gusto and bravado of actual military addresses, and none did anything but escalate the conflict.

Casualties had been great on both sides. Once, Ruby had been late for class because Weiss had cleaned up her things, leaving Ruby unable to find anything and too furious to ask Weiss where to locate what. Weiss, on the other hand, had been forced to bear witness to Ruby's retaliatory attack, which involved scattering every one of Weiss's possessions that wasn't nailed down to the four winds, or at least the four walls of their bedroom.

Yang had done her best to mediate the mounting war, arguing righteously for a sort of controlled chaos, not unlike the way she kept her own belongings, but Weiss's scathing comments had Ruby not merely indifferent to any degree of cleanliness but standing defiantly against it. Had it gone on much longer, Blake was sure she would have returned from class one day to find Ruby covered in mud, chasing a chemically-scrubbed Weiss throughout the dormitory. It had, oddly enough, been Nora who had brought an end to the hostilities by barging into the room one especially turbulent evening and telling them both that if their arguing ever woke her from her favorite dream again, she would reduce everything they owned to powder.

There had also been the incident with Jaune and Cardin Winchester, that insufferable leech. It was people like him that made her glad of her choice not to reveal her Faunus nature to anyone. Seeing how he and his gang had treated Velvet, alongside every other bigoted statement that oozed from his petulant and ugly mouth, had made her blood boil. She'd actually struck up a sort of proto-friendship with the rabbit Faunus, but, other than Oobleck's class, they saw very little of each other. Velvet had her own friends to sit with at lunch, and even if she hadn't, there wasn't much space for her at the table when both team RWBY and JNPR were there. Yang's friends, team SABL, also joined them from time to time, and twelve people made it hard to converse with anyone not seated directly beside you.

Blake had considered sitting with Velvet and her friends for lunch sometime, but she wasn't sure how to do it without making things awkward with her own team. While she had grown to like her teammates on some level, she wished she could think of a way to make them understand that she needed a break from them every once in a while. She liked Ruby when Ruby was being mature or fun and considerably less when she was being a child. Weiss had gotten easier, to the point that she and Blake could hold a civil conversation, but it still sometimes felt like being one of Cardin's friends. Sure he wasn't a dick to you, but he was still a dick. That's what Weiss was like.

Then there was Yang. Blake still had no idea what to think about Yang. She was similar to Ruby in that she seemed to have two sides to her, one good one bad. Blake liked the Yang that was caring, funny, and cheerful, but she wasn't sure she liked the cocky, swaggering Yang that dripped more machismo than most men Blake had ever known. The difficult thing about Yang was that those two sides weren't as distinct as Ruby's were. Blake could walk in on a conversation with Ruby and be able to tell which state she was in just by the sound of her voice. Yang, however, seemed to be everything at once, and Blake could only determine which side was being presented by picking out splinters of each from a single conversation. She wondered if it was because Ruby's immaturity seemed to only manifest when she was emotionally overwhelmed, whereas Yang's two sides weren't really sides, more like two halves of a whole.

Today, however, Yang was displaying no arrogance. It seemed the mystical force that caused women who are close to each other to start synchronizing their periods had begun its strange work, because the four of them had hit theirs within a few days of each other, giving Blake an interesting display of difference that she'd never really gotten the chance to study when she was a member of the White Fang.

Ruby's seemed rather average, though she hadn't been having them for as long as the rest of them had. She handled its coming with quiet resignation, like it was something she knew she shouldn't be embarrassed by but couldn't quite manage to treat casually. Weiss, on the other hand, dealt with it like someone who knew she shouldn't be embarrassed by it but didn't care. She refused to talk about it, turned sour when someone else brought it up, and Blake was convinced she either flushed her tampons down the toilet or buried them at the bottom of the trashcan, because even when Blake could smell the blood on her, no other signs ever manifested.

Then there was Yang, poor, poor Yang. If the toughness of one's body determined the harshness of period pains, then Yang was as tough as she acted. The blonde got cramps so severe that she would spend class doubled over on the desk, her face contorted in such a way that she seemed to be struggling not to vomit. While no one but a Faunus would notice, she also smelled like the scene of a murder, a scent that Blake was sadly familiar with. It was somewhat odd when Blake considered it. She'd heard in the past that working out was supposed to relieve how painful the cramps were, and Yang went to the gym every day.

Just seeing her in so much pain made Blake feel a little guilty. As a Faunus, her periods were light and mostly painless. She barely even bled. The only noticeable effect was that she was horny. A lot. Blake refused to refer to the state as being in heat, but if she hadn't been a Faunus, she probably would have made the comparison herself. Then again, all bigoted comparisons to animals aside, if not being a person meant not having to deal with the sort of cramps Yang was currently going through, then perhaps it was better to be a beast.

Today, Yang wasn't going to class at all. Weiss and Ruby had run ahead to class, and while Blake was finishing getting dressed, Yang had remained in her bunk curled up and shivering.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Blake asked as she finished putting on her shoes. "I feel bad leaving you here by yourself."

"I'll be alright," Yang said, rolling over and looking down at her from the edge of the bed. She even sounded sick, like she'd just gotten out of surgery. "I'll probably just try to sleep. Thanks though."

"You sure you don't want me to stay? It's no trouble, really."

"Go to class," Yang said, pointing for the door. She had probably meant to sound authoritative, but it came out like a dying wish. "You're a good student, so no playing hooky."

Blake smiled. At least Yang was still feeling good enough to attempt a joke, even if it came out as more cutesy than funny. Their first of class of the day was with Glynda. She, if anyone, would be understanding when Blake told her why Yang was absent, so the blonde shouldn't have to worry about her attendance.

"Alright," Blake said, feeling somehow compelled to reach up and tousle Yang's hair, an impulse she thankfully managed to ignore. "Text me if you need anything."

"Aye aye," Yang said, throwing a small salute. Her eyes were already closed, and she sounded like she was nodding off.

"I'll bring you some lunch too if you're not feeling better by then."

Yang smiled. "You're sweet. Thank you."

Blake smiled back. She picked up her book-bag and slung it over her shoulder before heading out the door.

#

Soren strode down the dormitory hallway, a polystyrene box in his hand. He reached the door to Yang's room and rapped his knuckles against the wood. He heard a muffled voice that he recognized as Yang's, and, interpreting her indistinct words as an invitation, opened the door and stepped inside.

Yang was still in her bunk, perched above Blake's on stacks of books. She was still wearing her pajamas and was lying on her side on one edge of the bed, her covers bunched up and exiled to the far corner. She looked like his intrusion had woken her up, considering how hard she was squinting in the dim light. Her hair was tangled and unkempt, meaning she probably hadn't even gotten out of bed to shower.

"Oh, hey Soren," she mumbled, rubbing her eyes and sitting up with some amount of difficulty.

"Heard you weren't feeling well today," he said, holding up his box. "Brought you some food."

"Oh," she said. "Blake said she was bringing me lunch already."

"Oh," Soren said in almost perfect mimicry. "If you don't want it…"

"I'm starving. Don't worry about it. If she does bring me anything, I'll eat it later. Could you help me down?"

He put her lunch on top of the bookshelf by the window and situated himself below her. He held his arms open, and she pushed herself off the edge of her bunk. He made sure to catch her around the chest, rather than her belly, and he didn't release her until he was certain she'd found her footing.

"Thanks," she said, patting him on the shoulder. She grabbed the box and shuffled towards the dining area. As she walked, she cracked open the container to reveal a medley of noodles, strips of marinated beef, and a cavalcade of vegetables in a sweet and spicy sauce, which he knew was one of Yang's favorite lunches from the school cafeteria. "Smells great."

She sat at the table, and he went to the kitchen to grab her a fork.

"Chopsticks please," she called out as he retrieved the utensil.

"Still don't know how you use these things," he said as he rummaged through the drawer for the wooden sticks.

"By having used them all your life. They're traditional where my dad's from, so Ruby and I grew up with them."

"Doesn't mean you have to keep using them," he said as he closed the drawer and headed back to the table. "A fork is so much more efficient."

"It's the _real_ way to eat noodles," she replied, accepting the chopsticks from his hand.

"You're just saying that because _my_ ancestors made a better eating utensil," he said, taking a seat beside her.

" _You_ just think that because you don't know how to use them," she said through a mouthful.

He held up his hands in surrender at that, and he sat back and watched her lay into the food like a vulture into carrion. "I thought PMS was supposed to kill your appetite," he said.

"It used to," she said, barely pausing between bites, "but when I went on the Pill, I stopped getting that bloated feeling that made me not want to eat. It also made it so my boobs don't get so tender, but I still get cramps like my ovaries are tying themselves in knots."

"You know, I've also heard sex helps with those," he said, bouncing his eyebrows at her.

She giggled, covering her mouth so she wouldn't spit up her lunch. "Flattered as I am that you would want to sleep with me when I look like this, I'm afraid that the thought of anything touching me down there is going to make me puke. Sorry."

He waved off her apology and let her eat. She could say what she wanted about not looking good, but even on a bad day, Yang outshone most of the world. He tried to force aside the thought of waking up to this Yang every day, with her hair like a bramble patch and her wide eyes creased with drowsiness, but he couldn't help but chase it. He imagined sitting down for breakfast every day, getting to watch her as she went about her morning routine. He imagined sharing the shower and the bed each evening, of rarely being out of arms reach of her.

He blinked when he realized he was daydreaming, that this moment between them was a friendly gesture on his part, rather than the middle of a blossoming romance. How often did this happen? How often did he take wing on some flight of fanciful dream, building a new reality for himself, only to be forced to confront the fact that none of it was real? It was such a foolish thing to be saddened by, but he always awoke from such visions with a glimmer of regret in his heart.

"Hey," Yang said, her chopsticks finally coming to rest on the edge of her box. "Do you remember what we talked about a few weeks ago, after that night with Liz?"

Another subject that stepped on his heartstrings. "I do," he said, hoping he sounded as unwilling to address the conversation as he felt.

"I know you don't want to talk about it, but I'd like you to try something for me."

He sighed. There wasn't much refusing her if she were going to ask like that. "Alright," he said.

"I want you to try talking with Blake."

He furrowed his brow at her. If she were trying to find him a replacement for her, Blake seemed an odd choice. He loved Yang because she was fiery and full of life, like the sun. From the few interactions they had shared, not to mention Yang's own stories, Soren had come to see Blake as a distant star at best, perhaps no less brilliant, but too far away and self-invested to compare to Yang's warmth.

"Why?" he asked.

"I know she's a little introverted, but she's a really nice person. I didn't ask either of you to feed me, but both of you did because you were worried about me. She actually reminds me a lot of you in certain ways. She loves to read and draw, and she likes the same kind of music that you do, I think. Neither of you have that many friends outside our group, and it's about time your team got more acquainted with mine instead of you guys just coming to be with me. Just give her a chance. For me."

Soren looked into her eyes and could see she was at least serious, and a deeper look told him that this was important to her whether he and Blake became an item or not. He shrugged his shoulders. "If that's what you want."

He could tell she didn't care for the way he worded that, but a moment later she smiled and placed her hand over his. "Thank you. Anyway, you need to start heading to class. I'll find out where she'll be this afternoon after school lets out and text it to you. Just act casual and don't let her know I sent you, and you'll be fine."

He stood and kissed her on the forehead, one last attempt to preserve his fantasy about her. "See you later," he said.

"Later," she said. "Go get 'em, tiger."

She remained at the table as he turned to go, leaving him alone by the time he reached the door. He cast a glance back at the bed area as he reached out for the doorknob, at the stacked beds that looked more like the aftermath of a tornado than bunk beds. What would be different if he had wound up here, rather than with his own team? He knew that was selfish, knew that there shouldn't be anything he would trade his teammates for, but he couldn't help but at least wonder. He smashed the idea into a dark corner of his thoughts, where the old voices mumbled hateful whispers in their sleep.

#

Blake walked with Weiss and Ruby back to their room, a bag of food hanging from her fingers. Her two teammates were off and on talking and arguing about the importance of the information discussed in Professor Port's most recent lecture, an argument Blake had surmised as beginning when Weiss had promised to copy her notes for Yang to look over before the next class. Ruby apparently believed that Weiss included too many extraneous details, which, to Weiss's credit, was more a fault with Port's lectures rather than Weiss's writing style. But, either simply to disagree with Ruby or just another example of her attempts at seeming perfect, Weiss was arguing that it was better to include too much information than not enough. Once again, Blake had to admit, she wouldn't be surprised if questions about Professor Port's irrelevant stories of his youthful heroics wound up on one of their tests in the future.

She actually agreed with Weiss about something. Today was starting to get weird. She tuned out most of their conversation with music, but her cat ears made her incapable of avoiding overhearing some of their banter. Say what she would about Weiss and Ruby's tendency to bicker, the past few weeks had made them both increasingly eloquent in their disagreements.

"All I'm saying," Ruby asserted, "is that too much detail is boring. Haven't you ever studied creative writing? Yang's going to take one look at those notes and be bored before she even reads it."

"I'm not writing to entertain," Weiss rebutted, tossing her head like a dismissive bureaucrat. "I agreed to give Yang an accurate summary of the day's lectures, and I have done exactly that. If you wanted to give her something more invigorating, perhaps you should start taking notes of your own instead of spending the whole class doodling."

Blake almost said something. She spent a large portion of her classes drawing in her notebooks herself, though she did make sure to write down anything she thought might be important to study later.

"It doesn't matter how accurately you copied everything if she doesn't want to read it!" Ruby said. "If the key to world peace was hidden in a book with ten thousand trillion pages, would you still read the whole thing to find it?"

"Yes, because that information is important. These notes aren't just to help us pass a test; they're here to help us survive in the field. We learned how to determine the size of a Beowolf pack just by looking at their tracks today. Did any of that information make it into your notes?"

Blake forced herself to refocus on her music. She was agreeing too much with Weiss for one day, and it was starting to affect her outlook on life. Just watching the two of them felt like watching the left brain and the right brain arguing with each other, two pieces that were equally valid but totally opposite and unwilling to compromise. It was either going to give her a headache or a transcendental revelation on the nature of the mind, and that wasn't a risk she was currently willing to take.

They reached their room, Ruby opening the door. Blake was surprised to see her bed occupied, Yang having apparently decided to switch bunks. The blonde perked up when they entered, sitting up and dangling her legs off the edge.

"Hey, guys," she said with a little wave. She still sounded sick, but less like she was on her deathbed, which was good considering whose bed she was currently on.

"I'm sorry, Yang," Ruby groaned, throwing every ounce of melodrama into her tone, even going so far as to feign a swoon. "I tried to reason with her, but she wouldn't listen to me!"

"What?"

"Apparently," Weiss said, stepping forward and handing a stack of papers to Yang, "my notes don't have enough fight scenes and forced romance to be entertaining."

Yang snickered. "Don't sweat it. Even a somewhat abridged Port lecture is better than a Port lecture. Thanks for the help."

"You are most welcome," Weiss said with a curtsy.

"I brought you lunch," Blake said, taking her turn to approach Yang, like a parishioner coming before the bishop to be blessed.

"You can put it in the fridge," Yang replied. "Soren dropped by unannounced and brought me some about an hour ago. I would have texted you, but I didn't want you get in trouble if your Scroll went off in class. Sorry. I promise I'll eat it later."

"Oh. Okay," Blake said.

Somehow she felt a little hurt. Maybe it was going out of her way to do someone a favor only to be told that her efforts were unnecessary. She put the childish offense behind her and strode into the kitchen to put the food in the refrigerator before rejoining her teammates in the bedroom.

"Sorry about your bed, by the way," Yang said when she saw Blake enter. "I got down to eat and to use the bathroom, but my gut hurt too much for me to want to climb back into mine. Hope that's okay."

"It's fine," Blake said, though she would have liked it if Yang had asked first. Then again, she supposed that could be checked up to Yang not wanting to disturb her in class as well.

"If you need your bed back, I just need a boost," Yang said.

"Don't worry about it. I'm heading out for a few hours anyway. If you need the bathroom, I wouldn't want you to get stranded again."

Yang grinned at her, some of her normal vivaciousness putting color on her cheeks. "Thanks, babe. You're the best."

Babe? There was one Blake hadn't heard in a while. The last time someone had called her that had probably been during her early teens, some randy idiot catcalling, a term she considered discriminatory and entirely unrepresentative of real cat behavior. Even Adam hadn't called her that. He had preferred something more romantic like 'my love' or 'my darling'. Always something possessive.

Blake suddenly wanted nothing more than to be alone, and she wanted to be thinking about literally anything else. She grabbed her book-bag again, not even bothering to change out of her uniform.

She was half-way to the door when Yang called out, "So where're you off to?"

Blake turned, one of her eyebrows involuntarily rising. "The library. Why?"

"No reason. Have fun."

Blake narrowed her eyes, but she turned and headed out the door without another word. The halls of Beacon were eclectically populated at this time of day. Classes had concluded, so she could pass through half a building without seeing another soul, but the moment she drew near a popular gathering spot, she'd find herself all but swimming through a tide of people. She weathered the storm of bodies until she reached the library, its doors closing behind her and sealing her in quiet. The expansive room was still well populated, but even though the students here were mostly chatting, rather than studying, the room's acoustics and size made it relatively silent.

She sought her favorite corner, a table set behind a bookshelf that hid it from the rest of the library. Most students didn't know about it, and she was glad to find it unoccupied. Of all the tables in the library, this one had the most graffiti, the most carved into its face. It had the least gum stuck to the bottom, but the fact that it was so sequestered and out of view made her wonder if anything salacious had occurred on or under it. Despite its squalor, she still loved it. It was a quiet companion, someone who would accept you whether you were a recluse like herself or a couple ravenous for a private place to touch.

She sat in the chair facing the bookshelf, not wanting the window behind her to distract her from her distraction. She removed the three books she had been planning to read from her satchel and placed them in a stack on the table like a martial artist setting up bricks to break. She doubted she could even finish the first before she needed to head back and go to bed, but seeing them all there, standing like a tower to be conquered, set her pulse racing. She put her earbuds in and put on a playlist of her favorite Nightwish songs before picking up the first volume and cracking it open.

She hadn't finished the first chapter before she felt someone approaching. She lowered her book enough to make it look like she was still reading but still giving her a view of the rest of the room. A second later, a boy walked around the bookshelf. It was that friend of Yang's, Soren as Blake recalled. He scanned the shelf before turning her way, putting on an expression that suggested he was surprised to see her, but she could tell it was fake. What the hell was he playing at?

"Fancy meeting you here," he said, smiling and taking the seat across from her.

She had to fight not to roll her eyes. He hadn't even picked up a book as a pretense. She remembered Yang asking her where she was going, and she was starting to smell a setup.

"Hi," she said, flicking her eyes up to him and promptly turning them back down as obviously as she could. She didn't even turn off her music.

He shuffled like someone who had studied for a chemistry test and had been handed an exam on medieval poetry. He seemed to be conflicted over whether it was too rude to interrupt her but was likewise not willing to leave until after he had. She sighed and pulled her headphones out of her ears.

"Did Yang put you up to this?" she asked, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Possibly," he muttered, cheeks reddening.

Blake shut her eyes to keep him from seeing how far back into her skull they rolled. She clapped her book shut. "Alright. What is it?"

"Well—Yang thought it would be nice if my team and I got to know you and Weiss a little better. I figured the next time I saw you, I'd sit down and chat."

Blake was fairly certain maybe half of that statement was true, but she would at least give him props for being as socially awkward as she was herself.

"So—who you listening to?" he asked.

"Nightwish."

He chuckled. "Loved those guys when I was younger. Yang said she thought we had similar tastes in music, but most of the bands I listen to are ones nobody's ever heard of."

Blake smirked. "Really? I bet I got you beat. Shoot."

She'd meant the challenge to scare him off, but he launched into the conversation with an eagerness she hadn't expected, considering his earlier floundering. She got caught up in the contest herself, the two of them swapping music like two kids trading Halloween candy. He served her some of his favorites: Rishloo, Riverside, and Anubis Gate, and she fired back with bands like Agalloch, The Twilight Sad, and A Covenant of Thorns, and those were just the ones they actually let each other listen to. She also found that their tastes did, in fact, share some similarities. Both of them were fans of Ghost Brigade, Leprous, and Thoushaltnot. He had even listened to Katatonia, one of her darlings.

Once they had exhausted their arsenals of music, he asked her about her book, and the rest of the afternoon was lost before she even noticed as she launched into a veritable storm of discussion. She talked about characters, writing styles, and authors, jumping from ones she adored to ones she couldn't stand. He wasn't able to keep up with her, but to his credit, he did better than anyone else she'd ever met. Even when he wasn't familiar with what she was talking about, he listened intently, as if jotting down imaginary notes.

The sun was going down by the time that wellspring of conversation ran dry, and she realized she had actually enjoyed herself. She'd also probably spoken more words in the past few hours than she had since setting foot in Beacon. How on earth had that happened?

"So," Soren said after a moment's silence, "what did you think about Ozpin appointing Ruby as your team leader?"

Blake made a considerate noise and crossed her arms. "When I first got here, I might have been upset, furious even, but that battle we had in the Emerald Forest during initiation let me see that she was just as capable as the rest of us. She was even the one to come up with the plan that let us kill that giant Nevermore. So yeah, I was a bit surprised because of her age, but I think I can see what Ozpin was thinking when he did it. How about you? How did you feel when he appointed you as leader of team SABL?"

He folded his hands and chuckled, a distant look entering his eyes. It aged him. She could easily imagine him older, with stubble on his face and silver in his hair as he sat on his front porch and watched the sunset with a look of contentment on his face.

"Saying I was shocked would be an understatement," he said. "I'd never lead anything before in my life. My teammates and I have never had particularly strong Aura, but I was especially slow to unlock mine, months behind the rest of my year at Signal. Most of the people in the year under me could use theirs before I could, and it started all sorts of nasty rumors about me."

Blake frowned. "What sort of rumors?"

He jumped a bit, as if nostalgia had made him say more than he intended. For a moment, she was certain he would retreat from the subject, but after a moment he began again.

"My father is a very private man. He never goes out or talks with anyone unless it's about business. When he married my mother, there were no guests or celebrations, just a quick signing of the certificate. My mother was sick a lot. She almost never left the house since my father could afford to pay people to do our shopping and cooking. She died not long after she had me, so, as you can probably imagine, most people in our neighborhood had never even seen her."

He continued, his voice becoming more and more subdued. "Once I got to Signal, and my inability to manifest my Aura became more and more obvious, some of my schoolmates started the rumor that, because I couldn't produce an Aura, that meant I had no soul. When I asked them how they could believe such a thing, they told me that there was no evidence that the woman I had been taught was my mother was real. No one had ever seen her, so who's to say she had even been human? They said she had been a Grimm. That's why I had no soul."

Blake felt a chill in her arms and a wrench in her chest. How uniquely twisted were the cruelties of children. Even just thinking about it, she could tell, stirred something in him. He wasn't looking at her eyes, his gaze locked onto the table, quietly seething.

"I don't expect you to understand what it was like for a while," he said, "as everyone started to fear me…"

"I do," she blurted.

He broke out of his brooding, his eyes coming up to meet hers.

"I do know what it's like—to be hated," she said. "I do understand what it feels like be demonized. I—don't know if I'm ready to tell you how I understand, but I can sympathize."

He nodded, as if trying to make his brain process what she had just said, and his vision shifted back to the tabletop. A smile broke out across his face. "Yang was the one who saved me from all of that," he said.

Blake hadn't expected that. While the Yang she knew hardly seemed mean-spirited, the blonde had always come off as one of those popular girls, the kind who wouldn't risk their reputation for anyone, much less a poor bullied boy that everyone thought was a monster. Looking at his expression, however, she realized how wrong she had been. There was such tenderness in his eyes, such warmth in his smile at the mere thought of Yang, like a prisoner seeing the world for the first time in years. He was so lost in his adoration that he seemed to have forgotten her entirely.

"That girl is too good for this earth," he said. "You're lucky to have her on your team, and I know for a fact that you couldn't ask for a better partner."

Blake couldn't even muster a grunt of acknowledgment, she was so lost in thought.

"Well," he said, sitting up and stretching, "it's getting pretty late. I suppose we should start heading back."

"Yeah," Blake breathed, barely hearing him.

He stood, and she did as well, if only to mirror him. She almost startled when he held out his hand to her. Was she supposed to let him take her arm? Was he going to walk her back to her room? Had he said something important?

"I had a great evening," he said, flashing her a grin he had borrowed from Yang. "It was great talking to you."

She took his hand, the only thing she could think to do, and he shook it with as much enthusiasm as she would have expected if she had promised to marry him. "Likewise," she said, doing her best to play cool.

"Goodnight, Miss Belladonna," he said with an exaggerated bow. "See you in class tomorrow."

"You too."

He spun on his heels and headed out of the now mostly empty library, turning at the door to give her one last wave. She exhaled. She'd actually had a rather pleasant afternoon as well, and not once had it felt like he was flirting with her. She was impressed. She turned and began gathering up her books, bemoaning, in spite of herself, how little she had actually managed to read, when her Scroll chimed.

She checked the screen to see a new text message from Yang. She opened it to see the lines, _"Just finished the dinner you brought me. It was super delicious! Thank you sooo much!"_ followed by a series of smiling emojis.

She thought back to everything Soren had told her about Yang, about the girl who had stood up for a friendless Grimm boy, and she wondered just who this blonde, seemingly air-headed woman really was at heart.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Blake awoke the next morning before her alarm, the sun still just a suggestion on the horizon. She crept out of bed and performed her morning ritual, but even when she had finished her shower, she emerged into a room still dim and devoid of anyone else awake. She wondered if some dream had awoken her so early, but she couldn't remember any.

She sneaked into the kitchen, being sure to maneuver around the creaky boards, and started preparing breakfast. Seeing as she had some extra time, she decided to treat herself for a change. She rolled up the sleeves of her kimono and set to work, doing her best to minimize the rattling of pans and pots. By the time she was finished, she had a bowl of white rice, a bowl of miso soup, and a plate covered in scrambled eggs and sardines. Her mouth was watering as she transferred everything to the table, and the room was beginning to brighten with morning light.

As she sat and considered what to eat first, the sound of her teammates stirring came from the next room. Grumbles of complaint, shifting of blankets, and the gentle chirp of their alarms whispered through the air, giving Blake a wonderful ambiance of preparation to complement each bite of her luxurious breakfast. She heard the shower start running, and a few moments later, Ruby and Weiss stumbled into the kitchen. Yang always got the shower first, considering how long it took all that hair to dry.

"Good morning," Weiss said mid-yawn, still stretching her arms as she made her way to the fridge.

Ruby followed after, practically dragging herself. Ruby only had two modes in the morning. If she was excited for something, as she had been on their first day of class, she was like a child on Christmas morning, bouncing off the walls and taking charge before she so much as removed her covers. This was not one of those days, and Ruby looked like an old crone for all the wrinkles and bags under her eyes.

"Sumfin smells good," she mumbled, nose twitching, as she followed Weiss into the kitchen, completing Blake's impression of an elderly woman at a rest home.

Blake was feeling full, so she let Ruby have the last of her eggs and started checking the news on her Scroll, while Weiss started brewing a pot of coffee. Ruby attempted to rope Weiss into an argument by commenting on how much she disliked the smell, but the young leader was still not awake enough to press the issue. The sound of the shower shutting off, followed shortly afterwards by a set of heavier footsteps entering the room, broadcast that Yang had entered the room as well.

"I feel fucking good today!" the blonde announced, as if making up for how quiet she had been the day before.

Blake looked up from her Scroll and nearly dropped it. Yang was practically naked, nothing but a pair of flirtatious panties on her hips and only a towel draped across her shoulders to cover her bosom. Her blonde hair was wrapped up in a second towel, forming a mountain atop her head, and she was smiling like she'd won the lottery.

"PMS finally turned to just MS?" Ruby asked, her brain's engine finally starting to rev to life.

"Yep," Yang said. "I'm probably about to start bleeding like pig, but I'm just glad I can breathe again."

"Well, breathe and dress yourself at the same time," Weiss snapped. "You look like you just got done shooting a porno."

"I'm just enjoying what it's like to be cool again. It feels like the past few days have been one long hot flash. Let me enjoy it."

Blake was certainly enjoying something, though she would hardly admit it. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stop eyeing Yang up. The blonde's killer abs and thighs were regularly on display, but they clearly weren't the only features she possessed. Her arms looked like desert sand dunes or a rolling plain for how often they rose and fell in swells of muscle. Her breasts protruded far enough from her chest that Blake began to feel sorry for the stress the blonde's uniform had to endure every day, yet they looked almost as perky as Weiss's.

On the note of Yang's wardrobe, perhaps it was the puffy sleeves of Yang's favorite jacket or the padding and layers of their uniform, or maybe it was just the fact that the blonde's hair wasn't normally done up, but some combination of those three had apparently been concealing a pair of shoulders that looked fit to bear aloft the sky. Blake could hardly believe that she wasn't looking at a statue of some heroine or ancient goddess come to life.

"You can feel cool and still wear a shirt," Weiss growled. "I'd like to enjoy my coffee without you flashing your udders at me."

"You jelly," Yang said with a smirk, groping herself through the towel, but she complied and headed back into the bedroom.

Blake, against her better judgment, suddenly developed a serious interest in the television across the room, a television that happened to be within line of sight of Yang's bed. Blake hurried across the room and clicked the TV on, but she had eyes only for Yang as the blonde looked around for a shirt. The one she found was on the floor. As Yang bent over to pick it up, Blake had to fight not to lick her lips. The size of that ass, the perfectly smooth shape, the way it jiggled at the slightest motion… It would look perfect hanging in a butcher's shop.

It took only a moment for Blake's mind to actually make an image of that thought, and Blake felt her cheeks burn crimson as if she'd actually spoken that last line aloud. _Where the fuck did_ that _idea come from?!_ she screamed in her own head. W _here are any of these thoughts coming from? Ohmygod, I didn't mean it like that! I am so fucking awful! What is wrong with me?_

"Blake, you okay?" she heard from right behind her.

She whirled to see Yang standing over her. The blonde had put on a shirt, if her white uniform shirt with the top three buttons undone counted. Blake realized she had been crouching in front of the TV for an indeterminate length of time without moving at all, and she couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"You were spacing out and wincing," Yang continued, sounding concerned. "You getting a headache? I can give you a cranial massage. I'm really good at it."

The amount of effort it took for Blake to not make her cat ears go flat against her head was titanic. "No need," she said, leaning away before Yang could reach out and discover the Faunus trait hidden beneath her bow. "I have some medicine in the bathroom. I'll go take some now."

That, at least, was true, and Blake fled to the safety of the toilet to the protests of Weiss, who was saying Blake better hurry before it was her turn to shower. Blake slammed the door shut and did her best not to hyperventilate. If she had any more thoughts as bad as that last one, maybe she really would have a headache. Not to mention, after seeing what Yang could do with her fists, she was pretty certain that a head massage from the blonde would result in one if it didn't leave her in a coma.

Blake breathed deep to steady herself. She had to admit that her conversation with Soren yesterday had her seeing Yang in a different light, but this was ridiculous. She must be about to hit her period as well if she was getting horny enough to start ogling other girls, not to mention her own teammates. Still though, she'd never seen a woman so beautifully proportioned before. Maybe, if she were feeling especially frisky, she would buy a book with a lesbian scene or two the next time she placed a book order, just to see what it did for her.

#

A few days later, and Blake did exactly that. The newest installment of one of her favorite romance sagas (one of the less pornographic ones) had gone on sale, and while she was shopping, she had decided to give her idea a try. She bundled her order with a couple of short novels that allegedly had a few good girl-on-girl scenes sprinkled in amongst the rest of the smut. She wasn't sure she was willing to commit to a lesbian-only book right away. At least this way, the books wouldn't be a total waste if she decided she didn't like it.

The day her order came in was a fortuitous one as well. Weiss had forced Ruby to the library for a study session that, in Weiss's words, would only end when Ruby couldn't fail a test if she tried, and if the state of Ruby's notebook were any indicator, Weiss wouldn't be satisfied for more than enough time for Blake to satisfy herself. Yang was also out, seeing a movie with team SABL. She had invited Blake to come with them, and Blake had to confess that her chat with Soren a few days ago made it a tempting offer. However, after the other day's stirrings, she found it increasingly awkward to be around Yang. She was somewhat ashamed of that, as she was now more curious to get to know Yang as a person, but she told herself that, once her period had ended and she had gotten this new fantasy out of her system, she would try to be more sociable.

Blake made sure the door was locked, on the off chance someone from team JNPR came knocking, and dimmed the lights in the bedroom. After making sure the drapes were pulled shut, she stripped bare, enjoying the rush of being naked in the space she shared with her teammates. The thrill at the thought of someone walking in on her had helped her climax in the past, even though she would probably die of embarrassment if it actually happened. She plugged her Scroll into the speaker Yang had on the bookshelf by the window. She had entered team JNPR's room often enough to know that their rooms were well sound-proofed, a fact that, along with the dimmer switches, made her question the decency of the ones who had built this place.

After putting on her erotic lounge music, she hopped into bed and lay on her stomach. The warmth of the blankets on her front and the cool air on her back from the ceiling fan gave her the initial tickle that would grow into the itch that was so wonderful to scratch. She propped herself up on her pillow and opened the first book, what appeared to be a fantasy story about a young farm girl turned hero. Not the most original concept, but a comfortable starting point for her adventure into the world of girl-on-girl romance.

The story wasted little time heating up. Within the first few chapters, the heroine, a somewhat flighty girl named Nyla, had started trysts with two different men, one a childhood friend she had grown up with and another with an older man, who favored her with money and gifts whenever she slept with him. Spicy as some of those scenes were, however, Blake held off on touching herself, letting her blood get hot in preparation for the lesbian action she knew was coming.

Her patience paid off in chapter four, when Nyla stumbled upon the forbidden pool where the Blade of Destiny was to be found. After a brief fit of gagging at how cliché everything was, Blake turned her focus to the character of Monarch, the ghost of a long dead empress who protected the Blade of Destiny until the next empress came to claim it. Under the paper-thin auspices of testing the strength of Nyla's character, Monarch claimed that Nyla must make love to her and prove herself skilled enough to tame the ancient spirit and make a sex slave of her.

As Nyla hesitantly accepted the offer and touched the holy sword, making Monarch corporeal, Blake was preparing to let her hands start wandering when she encountered her first problem. What was she supposed to imagine? Usually, when she masturbated, she would imagine herself as the protagonist being taken by whatever man they were sleeping with at that moment. That's what her trusty hairbrush was for, serving as a makeshift dildo that she could fantasize into the strong man taking her for the ride of her life. How was she supposed to touch herself to simulate sex with a woman?

She supposed she could just finger herself or rub her clit, but groping and stroking herself had always been her way of getting to the point that she could close her eyes and pretend she was actually fucking someone, not the finishing point. Was she supposed to finger herself and just pretend it was someone else doing it? She was too aware of her own hand for that to work. She could try rubbing something against her body to simulate a tongue or another person's palm, but there weren't really any objects in the room that fit that description.

She read on anyway, offhandedly playing with her clit just to keep her libido going. The potential solution revealed itself a few paragraphs down, when Monarch lay in the shallow end of the pool and ordered Nyla to entwine legs with her. Blake had seen porn where women scissored before, but she had always thought it somewhat impractical. Tonight, however, it might be just the thing she needed. She adjusted herself and placed her pillow between her legs. She'd read about girls who masturbated by grinding on their pillows, but circumstances, such as communal living both now and during her early life with the White Fang, as well as her years with Adam in between, had never really allowed her to try for herself.

The tingle that shot through her loins as she pushed her hips forward for the first time made her gasp loudly enough to be heard over her music. For a few seconds, she didn't move, the sensation so surprising that she wasn't sure she wanted more. A few seconds to catch her breath swiftly allayed that apprehension, however, and she slowly dragged her hips back across the soft fabric, each crease and fold in the pillowcase catching on her clit and sending jolts of pleasure shooting through her. The effect wasn't quite as sharp as that first push had been, but as she closed her eyes and imagined herself as Nyla, she couldn't deny that she was feeling the same euphoria she experienced when she was riding her hairbrush.

She did her best to read further, but the new sensation on her groin made it difficult to concentrate. She ultimately put the book aside and focused on that last image of Nyla grinding her pussy against Monarch's, the water of the pool rippling and lapping up of their smooth bodies as their lovemaking disturbed it. She wished she could do this in the shower to replicate the feeling, wished she had more pillows so she could simulate Monarch's soft breasts, but she had to make do with her imagination.

The book had described Monarch as having long, dark hair and an average bosom, but, in spite of Blake's attempts to dream otherwise, Monarch kept changing into a busty blonde with a body like an Olympian's and eyes like amethysts.

 _I shouldn't be thinking like this_ , Blake thought. _It's not decent._

But her protests fell upon her own deaf ears, her hips thrusting with increasing urgency and her clit growing hot from the friction.

 _This is what creeps and pervert do, Blake. What are you doing?_

In the end, she couldn't stop herself, and as she pictured herself on top of Yang, clutching to one of the blonde's herculean thighs as she humped the other, she thought of Yang's face the night before initiation, looking at her with amorous eyes and biting her lip with those pearly teeth. She imagined Yang moaning her name, and she came. It wasn't the same as when she fingered herself. This orgasm was hard and sudden. Normally when she came, it was like lying on the beach and letting the tide drift in and carry her out to sea. There were waves then, yes, but this time the wave hit her like a wall, driving her helplessly into the water and dragging her into the undertow.

For a few moments, she couldn't stop her hips, and the only way to keep from crying out was to cut off her breathing entirely. The lack of oxygen made it feel like she was cumming with her whole body, rather than just her loins, and when the sensation finally passed, she lay like a defeated warrior on a battlefield, limp and drenched with her own sweat. Her breath was harsh and loud, a discordant tempo when compared to the rhythmic groans coming from the speaker near her head.

Her sheets were damp with perspiration, and the wind on her back felt colder than before, as if her orgasm had peeled back a layer of skin and exposed the sensitive nerve endings to the elements. As she sat up, she winced. Her clit was a bit raw from all the rubbing, though not painfully so. She would have to invest in a softer pillow case if she intended to do this again. Perhaps she could find one made from the material they used for those love pillows, preferably something that _didn't_ come with an embarrassing caricature of a cartoon character on it.

She flipped onto her back, letting the ceiling fan cool her front now, and pondered what she had just done. She had gotten off to the thought of one of her teammates, one that she wasn't even sure she liked all that much. Hadn't she been angry when Yang had come back into the ballroom, smelling of sex, that first night? How could she judge when she had just used Yang as fap material? Why hadn't she just thought of Glynda? She was an older woman that fit the mold for the story well enough. Or perhaps Pyrrha. She had a rockin' bod, as it were, and even though it might have been awkward thinking about her friend in such a situation, it was at least better than imagining the girl who slept right above her in the same room.

It had to be a phase, a byproduct of her hormones starting their monthly rampage. She promised herself that, even if she did masturbate like this again, she wouldn't think of anyone she knew, even if she had to use her Scroll to watch porn to prevent herself from doing it.

She stood and gathered up her clothes before marching to the bathroom. A shower would be a good way to cool her head, and another round with her hairbrush as the water rained down on her would help put any further thought of Yang or any other woman out of her mind.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Blake did her best to remain focused as Dr. Oobleck rattled off a rapid-fire string of statements masquerading as a lecture, but there were far too many questions running through her mind, questions Oobleck's class wasn't capable of answering. It had been two weeks since she had masturbated to thoughts of Yang, but though her period had come and gone, thoughts of other girls still haunted her fantasies. For the past few days, she had been able to think of little else, losing track of her studies in order to reflect and consider this new dilemma.

She furrowed her brow. Dilemma seemed like an insensitive term to use. There was a perfectly lovely gay couple she had seen around Beacon, and calling their feelings a dilemma felt rude. She couldn't help but be concerned, however. She grimaced. That word probably wasn't kind either. She finally settled on the term confused. She had been with Adam since she'd started puberty, and not once during their relationship had she looked at another woman and felt anything. Why then was she suddenly having all these feelings? She'd never really put much stock in the idea that one's sexuality could change over time, much less as rapidly as this seemed to be coming on.

She'd spent the past few days experimenting, taking every chance she could to get herself off to as many different scenes as she could, both from her books and from actual porn sites. She had discovered that she still got off to guys, though she found that when she watched porn of straight couples, she often found herself with eyes for the woman, rather than the man. Was she bisexual then? She wasn't sure how to process that idea, not necessarily because she thought it strange but because it had simply never occurred to her.

She decided to test herself. She was seated on the far right side of the classroom and semi-close to the front, a decent enough position to see the faces of most of the rest of the class without drawing too much attention to herself. She started at the left side of the room, back row, and worked her way down, taking a few moments to observe the face and body of each student and consider how willing she would be to kiss that person, regardless of emotional attachment. She did her best to reach a conclusion quickly, before she thought up some fantasy that might corrupt her judgment.

By the time she was halfway through the room, the pattern was already clear. None of the boys did anything for her. They weren't all bad looking, by any means. Quite a few were sufficiently handsome, Blake supposed, but she wouldn't kiss any of them just based on their looks. It was mostly the same story with the girls, but the fact that there was no discernible difference was disconcerting. She sped through the rest of her classmates with little variation, at least until she arrived at the people she knew. Jaune was a definite no, and while Ren seemed nice, Blake couldn't muster the urge to see him in a sexual light. Nora was a bit too weird for most people's taste, but as Blake turned to Pyrrha, took a good long look at her, she felt her first pang of uncertainty.

She imagined herself being overwhelmed on the battlefield, with Grimm closing in around her. As she teetered back and forth, weak and wounded, she pictured Pyrrha swooping in and saving the day, driving away the Grimm with the same prowess she displayed in Glynda's combat class. It wasn't love at first sight, but the thought of Pyrrha then walking over and lifting her, bridal style, and cradling her in her strong arms was not unpleasant.

There was Velvet, the one other Faunus Blake was somewhat well acquainted with. She knew nothing of Velvet's sexuality, could barely picture the shy girl in a sexual way at all, but as she considered the scenario of she and the rabbit Faunus on a park bench beneath a sky of fireworks, the thought of the two of them turning to each other, hesitating for only a moment, and then locking lips came naturally enough.

Then here was Yang…

Blake looked away from her teammates and sought the most attractive male face in the classroom. There was a hunky boy near the center of the room, one she knew nothing about and who seemed to keep mostly to himself. He had semi-short black hair with sloping bangs, and he dressed in a style that Blake had come to accept that she thought was cool but no one else did. She carved out a backstory for him in her head, making him a renegade warrior with a dark, gritty past that would fit in with some of the characters from her novels.

As she fleshed out his younger years, she realized he was starting to seem more attractive to her. Why was that? She'd skipped over him not two minutes ago. She returned her eyes to the front of the class so that the frown of concentration on her face might make it seem like she was paying attention.

She considered most of the fantasies she had when she read her books, the sorts of men that she had been attracted to when she delved into the pages. She thought of Master Kenta from _Ninjas of Love_ , the mysterious assassin. Kenta was confident, quiet, and powerful, and the thought of being fucked by such a man still put a tickle in her stomach and warmth between her legs. Adam had been like that, had been ambitious and charismatic. He had been a monster as well, but she had been his lover for years before she had realized that.

That was her type, the sort of man that turned her on. The men she craved were strong, often older, and experienced. Most of the boys around her probably couldn't beat her in a fight, were her own age, and likely couldn't make her cum without help. Was that why she was only now starting to have eyes for women? She had still been a perplexed mess when it came to boys by the time Adam had made her his, and she had devoted herself so fully to him that she had never once considered anyone else. She'd never thought to look at another girl lustfully, never experimented with her sexuality because she had been convinced for so long that she had found a lifelong partner. Now, she was free to pick and choose.

 _I guess I'm a lesbian now_ , she thought, savoring the feel of the statement. _Or at least bi._ She let that thought sink in, toyed around with it like a new tenant rearranging furniture to find a layout that suited them. _I, Blake Belladonna, am also attracted to girls._ Just thinking it felt good in some strange way, like finding a hidden treasure in a familiar place just because she looked at it in a new way.

She supposed she would need to reconsider her dating options. Beacon was brimming with beautiful women, and suddenly having all of them on the table was a daunting idea. She supposed she could look over the room again for a start, try to evaluate what she found attractive and decide if any of her classmates were worth pursuing. As she moved her neck to do so, however, her eyes made it no further than Yang, who was sitting directly beside her. All the images from a few weeks ago, memories of Yang's nearly naked body and seductive grin, came rushing back. Yang was strong and certainly experienced, if the night of initiation were any indicator…

Blake swallowed, an action she was unusually aware of herself doing. Hadn't she been nervous about the very idea of living with Yang, much less dating her? She tried to temper her sudden infatuation with logic, pointing out to herself all the things she knew about Yang that would grate on her nerves. The blonde was stubborn, somewhat impulsive, and quick to anger. One look at Yang, however, and her thoughts turned. Yang was all of those things, yes, but she was also strong, dynamic, and equally quick to compassion and forgiveness…

"Miss Belladonna!" intruded the voice of Doctor Oobleck, shattering Blake's concentration and nearly making her jump out of her chair. "This is the third time you've glanced around the room looking like a terrified groundhog. If something is affecting your ability to pay attention, speak up!"

Blake felt frozen for a moment, and one flick of her eyes was enough to confirm that the rest of the class was now staring at her. She hoped her face wasn't as red as it felt. "I—need to use the restroom," she lied.

"I see. Well, go ahead if it's that pressing. I realize that the history of political relations between Vale and Atlas is a riveting topic, but don't have an accident in the classroom over it."

Blake was glad to hurry from the room after that comment. If her face got any hotter, she was sure she'd start sweating. As she stood, she saw Yang looking after her, concerned. Blake made sure not to meet her eyes, lest her own mind betray her. She half-jogged out into the hall towards the bathroom, desperate for a place she could hide in.

#

Yang rolled her peas back and forth across her plate with her fork, taking in the roar of the cafeteria chatter but not really listening to any of it. She and her team were eating lunch with their usual company of teams JNPR and SABL, practically taking up an entire table by themselves. She did her best to peek over at Blake without turning her head, but if past glances were any indicator, Blake was too distracted to notice her unless she leaned in and blew in Blake's ear.

Blake had never come across as the best conversationalist, and even on her best day, she usually spent the lunch period reading or drawing, only occasionally speaking up. However, she usually seemed to be listening, always prepared to chime in and never being caught unaware if someone spoke to her directly. Today was different. She didn't even play with her food, just sitting with fork in hand and staring lamely down at her plate like a still-life painting. She had been so flustered earlier when Oobleck called her out in class, but Yang wasn't sure how to approach her to ask what was wrong.

"Yang!" Weiss snapped. "Are you listening to me?"

Yang's head whipped up, her knees jumping and rattling the table. "Wha? Oh, yeah. Of course."

Weiss glowered at her, clearly not buying her fib. "I thought you wanted to hear about my trip to Atlas Academy."

Yang did her best to put on an apologetic smile, holding up her hands in a gesture of peace. "I do, it's just…"

"I'm not feeling very hungry," Blake said all of a sudden. "I'll see you guys in class."

She pushed her tray towards Nora, who dove on it as if she hadn't just finished her own, and strode away without an explanation.

"Blake!" Yang called, but she either didn't hear or didn't want to turn back. Within moments, she had disappeared out the doors and into the crowded campus.

"Does she seem—off to you guys today?" Yang asked.

"I know," Ruby replied, her voice almost pitiful. Ruby had never been one for hiding her emotions, and it was obvious just by looking at her how worried she was about their teammate. "I wish I knew what was going on."

"She seems fine to me," Weiss said, sipping her drink as if nothing in the world could possibly be wrong. "She's always going off by herself."

"Yeah," Yang said, "but this is—different."

"Yang is right," Pyrrha interjected. "She's barely been able to sit still today, and when she does, she goes off into her own world."

"Ooh, we should do something to cheer her up!" Nora chimed in. "We should go raid the boy's dorms and steal their underwear!"

"The dorms are coed, Nora," Ren said. "We live together, remember? There are no male dorms."

That one fact seemed enough to stymie Nora, at least for another few seconds as she reconsidered their options.

"We could get some drinks," Liz suggested. "That should mellow her out."

"She doesn't strike me as the drinking type," Brie said, a sentiment Art echoed.

"We could still take her out somewhere," Yang said. "That always helped me relax."

"Yang!" Ruby said in the tone of a huffy parent, only missing the hands on her hips. "Are you crazy? Blake is introverted. The last thing she's going to want if she's feeling anxious is to be around a whole bunch of strange people."

"What?" Nora gushed, returning to the conversation like a volcano. "What does she have to be anxious about? All of us will be there."

"That's not the point," Soren quietly added.

"Yeah," Yang said. "Ruby knows what she's talking about on this one. She had a bit of a loner streak when she was younger." Yang gave her sister a one-armed hug as she spoke, and though Ruby pouted, she didn't pull away.

"So what should we do?" Jaune asked.

"We should just have a quiet evening in out room," Ruby said. "Familiar settings always helps."

"Ooh!" Nora spouted once again. "Ren and I should make her dinner. We should have breakfast for dinner! I don't know about you guys, but I am hankering for pancakes!"

"I could bring some beers and soda," Liz said. "We could make an evening of it."

Ruby narrowed her lips. "Too many people might not be a good idea. I know that whenever I was down, I never wanted too big of a crowd. It made me feel more isolated. It would probably be best if it was just the four of us, something quiet and intimate that lets her know we're doing it for her."

"We could watch some movies," Yang suggested. "I don't know if we have any that she would enjoy though."

"If she's got something on her mind, it might be better to do something more engaging. That way she won't dwell on it as much."

"I have some board games," Weiss said.

Ruby's eyes lit up, and her frown curled back up into a grin. "That's perfect! It'll be like a family game night. You're a genius, Weiss."

Weiss seemed momentarily caught off guard by the force of Ruby's praise, but a moment later she was flattering herself as though she had earned twice as much.

"If you guys want to play some of her favorite music," Soren said, "I can tell you who she likes."

"If you need any snacks or drinks, just let me know," Liz said.

"Aw, you guys are great," Ruby said. "Thank you all so much."

"Happy to help," Soren said with a smile.

Yang wondered how much he wanted to be there though. She'd spoken with him about his "date" with Blake in the library, and I spite of his initial reticence towards the idea, she had detected a hint of excitement in his voice when he had told her about it. He'd been disappointed when Blake had declined to go to the movies with them not long after that, and she'd secretly been hoping that the two of them would get hitched or at least start meeting more often. But for the last few weeks, Blake had been growing steadily more reclusive, practically flinching whenever Yang tried to intervene. Yang could only pray that tonight would help her partner loosen up.

"So it's settled then," Ruby said, sounding like her normal chipper self. "Family fun night with team RWBY it is."

#

Yang absentmindedly scratched her chin as she observed the game board set up on the table by their kitchen. They had let Weiss convince them to play Monopoly, which, going by the state of the board, hadn't been the best idea. Yang had managed to scrounge together a few houses on her red Vacuo spaces, along with the utilities: the Cross Continental Transit System and the Atlesian Air-fleet, and Ruby and Blake were faring little better. Weiss, on the other hand, had control of all four railroads, the green Atlas spaces, and she had just finished placing hotels on the dark blue Schnee Dust Company spaces, creating a veritable walk of death to any who didn't roll high enough to pass over it.

Ruby took her turn, landing on a chance card. "Jail!" Ruby exclaimed. "Oh thank goodness!"

Her little sister looked delighted to take her token and place it squarely in prison, unable now to land on a property that would bankrupt her, at least for the next few turns. Yang was next, and her roll had her landing on Free Parking. She took the chance to place a few more houses on her properties, as Weiss was drawing near them. Weiss's turn, however, proved to foil her plan, as she rolled an eleven and skipped right over Yang's spaces and landed on her own railroad. She shot Yang a smug look.

Blake was next. The black-haired girl had been struggling the past few turns, not conducive with their plans to cheer her up. She seemed to grow more irate with each loss, though she never voiced a complaint; it was just something Yang sensed. Blake had landed on Yang's Atlesian Air-Fleet space last turn, and she now faced Weiss's gauntlet of hotels. As Blake shook the dice in her hands, Yang said a silent prayer that she would manage to avoid Weiss's properties, virtually all of which would bankrupt her.

Blake swept her hand over the board, the dice clattering onto it. Nine. Yang counted the spaces as Blake moved her piece.

"Ha," Weiss said. "You just landed on the Schnee Dust Mines. That'll be fifteen hundred lien."

Blake didn't have near that much, and she hadn't enough property to mortgage off either. No matter what she did, it was bankruptcy.

As Weiss collected the last of Blake's lien, she said, "It looks like you'll be indentured to me for a long time, Miss Belladonna."

The comment was barbed, but Blake seemed to take it like a sword stroke, her fists balling up and her lips setting into a line. Neither Ruby nor Weiss seemed to notice. As Ruby grabbed the dice to take her turn, Blake stood from her chair and hastened back into the bedroom.

"Doubles? Nooo!" Ruby cried, her stint in jail ended unfortunately early.

Weiss was cackling at her, but Yang barely heard them. She watched as Blake didn't stop at the bedroom, continuing her march until she reached the front door and quietly exiting. Ruby and Weiss were making too much noise to hear the door close.

"Yang, it's your turn," Weiss said, calling Yang's attention back to her surroundings.

"Uh—," Yang uttered, looking back towards the front door. "I'm out."

She stood and jogged towards the door, the sound of Ruby and Weiss's confusion trailing after her. She stepped into the hall, her head swiveling both left and right for a sign of Blake's passage, but the black-haired girl was nowhere to be seen.

#

Blake burst onto the balcony of the ballroom and was momentarily gladdened to find it empty, the only silver lining she could find in this miserable rain cloud of a day.

 _What am I doing? This is stupid, Blake. What's the matter with you?_

She leaned onto her elbows against the balustrade, the panoramic view of Beacon sprawling out before her, but she kept her eyes on the railing, her mind spiraling away into her tumultuous thoughts. She knew she was being foolish. She knew Weiss couldn't possibly understand how painful her words had been, but after the incident with Oobleck earlier, she couldn't maintain her control over her emotions. Her Scroll buzzed for the tenth time since she'd left the bedroom, but like all the times before, she ignored it.

 _Don't think about it, Blake. You know what happens when you go down that road._

She did her best, but she couldn't hold back the deluge of memories. There had been a time when Blake had considered leaving the White Fang, years before she had left Adam standing alone as the rest of the train pulled away. Her reasons for wanting to leave back then had been much the same as the ones that had finally made her break away, her fear that the peaceful organization she had thought would lead her people to salvation was being turned into a terrorist force. She had brought these fears before Adam and confessed her desire to leave. She had thought he would be angry with her, that he would demand she leave and never return if he didn't kill her right there. What he had done was somehow worse.

He had told her she could leave if she could do one thing. He promised to show her something, and if she could still pity humans afterwards, then she was free to go. He had taken her to the Schnee Dust Mines. She had seen Faunus so weighed down with debt that working in the mines for the rest of their lives wouldn't scratch the surface, making them slaves in all but name. She had seen Faunus callously mistreated by the "guards" the Schnees had hired to "protect" the Faunus from bigoted protesters, little more than bondsmen with a less distasteful title. One Faunus had died in the mines and not been removed until he had started to stink.

Adam had taken her to the slums nearby, where the workers lived like rats in hovels no better than a hole in the wall. She had seen how they were given water barely distinct from poison and food that could be called trash. They had looked like animals, ragged and borderline feral. They had stared at her and Adam with terror in their eyes, like beasts in a cage shying from the master's whip that they could not dodge. Everything anti-Faunus demonstrators claimed about her and her kind had been made real in that place. They had become animals because that's what they were treated like.

How many years had it taken after that for her to let go of the hatred that those sights had inspired in her? How long before she had recognized that Adam treated humans just as cruelly?

 _He treated them that way because they deserved it._

 _That's a lie! Shut up!_

 _You still hate them. Just looking at Schnee makes you furious._

Blake gripped the sides of her head, begging for the voice to stop. The intruding thoughts had her voice, but they spoke with Adam's words. The thoughts prowled ever in the corners of her mind, but at time like these, they burst out of the brush and sank their teeth into her heart. What hurt the worst was that everything the voice said was true, was knowing that the voice wasn't an invasive force but the thoughts she pretended she didn't still believe in. She realized she was crying, her tears so hot she was certain they were boiling before they spilled over her eyelashes and down her cheeks.

"Blake?"

It was Yang's voice, but Blake didn't dare turn around. She tried to scrub the water from her eyes, considered leaping from the balcony and disappearing, but by the time she worked up the nerve to try, a tender hand had her by the shoulder.

"Blake, what's wrong?" Yang asked, her gentle attempt to get Blake to turn towards her still more forceful than Blake had the will to resist.

A thousand things leapt to the tip of Blake's tongue, confessions, pleas for help, but none of them made it past her lips. _Accept me. Accept me, please._

"I…" Blake sobbed, unable to form words without blubbering.

 _Hold me._ She remained with her back against the balustrade, trying to hide her eyes behind her bangs. _See through me. Understand me, please! Realize what I am and tell me you don't care!_

Yang had always spoken sympathetically about the Faunus, and Soren had painted her as a champion of the downtrodden, so why couldn't she just open her mouth and tell Yang the truth about what was wrong? Blake sank to the floor, curling up into a ball and burying her face in her knees. She felt Yang kneel down to join her, that hand still clasping her by the arm.

"Blake, it was just a game," the blonde said, though her voice made it clear she knew this was too deep to be about a boardgame. But that was it. She didn't see any deeper than that, Blake's secret still hidden in darkness.

"I know," Blake managed to stammer, fighting to steady her voice. "It's just—when I get upset, I start thinking about bad things, and I can't stop."

A truth yes, but one that meant nothing. Yang's look of confusion changed to one of solemn understanding, but Blake knew she didn't really understand and wouldn't try to understand any further.

Yang shifted her position and sat beside Blake, wrapping her right arm around Blake's shoulder. "Yeah," she whispered. "I'm the same way."

Blake didn't answer. She'd never seen Yang so much as sniffle, much less brood or weep, so how could she say they were the same? Either way, though, her shoulder was there to be cried on, her arm was comforting, and her body was warm, so Blake allowed her head to drift down and rest on Yang's shoulder. In a moment, Blake was able to feel the silence wrapping around them, and the thought of disturbing it with tears seemed to convince them to stay in her eyes. She was able to feel the fading heat of the sun on her skin and see the sky becoming a rainbow, and all the words that had been screaming inside her head closed their mouths to see it.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

How had it all happened so fast? Yang had run through the day's events a dozen times, and she still wasn't sure. Yesterday, after Blake had calmed down, the two of them had returned to the room and gone to bed. This morning, Blake had seemed more composed, and seeing as they had the day off, Weiss had suggested they go into town to observe the preparations for the upcoming Vytal festival. Everything had been fine for a while, until the topic of the White Fang had been brought up. After that, Blake had been at Weiss's throat for the rest of the day, and Weiss hadn't been willing to let the matter drop.

Yang had gotten used to Ruby getting into arguments with Weiss, but Blake was a different story. Blake never lost her temper at anyone. Yesterday had been the first time she had seen Blake lose her cool, much less snap at somebody. Yang had been concerned the entire way back to Beacon, but any worry she might have had paled when compared to the feeling that had shot through her heart at Blake's last words: "Maybe we were tired of being pushed around."

It was now three in the morning, Weiss and Ruby had gone to sleep, and Yang was still awake, sitting on Blake's bed and thinking about those words. Had Blake really been a member of the White Fang? If so, why was she here at Beacon? Had she run away or was she a spy?

Yang sighed. No one but Blake herself could answer those questions. Yang looked down at her Scroll for the fifth time in as many minutes, and the edges of her mouth and her brow turned a notch lower when she saw that there was still no reply to the half-dozen messages she had sent or the three calls she attempted to make, only to be sent straight to Blake's voicemail. She and Ruby had tried to chase Blake after the black-haired girl had fled from the room, but even though Ruby could exceed Blake's speed, Blake's had stealth. Yang had gone back to the balcony where she had found Blake the day before, had scoured the library and every inch of campus that wasn't locked up, but neither she nor her sister had found any sign of their teammate.

She tried to tell herself that things would be alright, that Blake would be back soon and everything could be explained with no harm done. She had done her best to convince Blake of the same, swearing every oath she could in her messages that she wouldn't think any differently about Blake no matter what she told them, but something in the back of her mind told her it wouldn't end that way. This was more than a misunderstanding or a personal grievance. If Blake had ties to a terrorist organization, the police or even the military might soon be involved, and Blake would be taken irrevocably from them.

Yang hugged herself and went to the window, the light of the fractured moon streaming in. Blake was out there somewhere, and Yang swore she would find her if she had to, would protect her if it came to that. That's what teammates were for, and no one deserved to be abandoned.

#

Sun Wukong rarely boasted of his virtues, mostly because he didn't have that many. He wasn't a monster by any means, but he'd never call himself a saint either. He had stowed away on a ship to get to Vale earlier, leaving his teammates behind on the official transport, because he had been curious. Was it against the law? Sure. But he had been given a ticket to sail to Vale, so who was he hurting by taking a different ship? It summed up his philosophy on life rather well, holding to a few strict principles of what it meant to be good without getting caught up in all the red tape that normal people so strictly adhered to.

Today, however, he would allow himself one thing: he was patient. He had seen the Faunus girl for the first time while he had been fleeing from the police, who wanted to make a big fuss over his choice of transportation. She had been walking with three other girls, all of them beautiful in their own way, but he'd had eyes only for her. She intrigued him in a way he wasn't fully sure he understood. Something about a Faunus going out of her way to hide her nature from the world just spoke to him. Suffice to say, he had followed her back to Beacon on a whim, hoping he would find a way to speak with her and not come off as some sort of stalker.

Luck had been with him. Just as he had been prepared to give up waiting on her, she came charging down the road and stopped at the statue he had been waiting by. He'd introduced himself, apologized for the manner in which he had come to meet her, and gotten her name: Blake, but after, that, getting her to even speak had been a monumental effort. Anyone else, and he would have written them off as rude and bitter, but Blake had stuck by his side no matter where he went. Sometime it felt like he was following her and others like she was following him, and when night had come and Sun had found a quiet bench in the park to sleep on, she had curled up on the one across from him as if she'd done it a thousand times.

She slept like she'd lived her life on the streets, but when he had invited her to get breakfast at a local diner the next morning, she had spoken to the waiter politely and without a shred of vulgarity. She had even sipped her tea daintily, as if she were accustomed to attending old-timey dinner parties like he'd seen in movies, where men wore top hats and monocles and the women all wore frilly dresses. It made it easy for him to endure the cold shoulder she kept giving him, giving him the chance to enjoy the simple pleasure of watching her and wondering what was going on in her head.

They were set up similarly now, on the outdoor awning of a second story café, sipping tea and not saying a word. Blake had only allowed them to sit down in places that weren't at street level, leading Sun to believe that she was worried about her friends finding her. Sun kept his gaze fixed on her, but she was staring at the table. For most of their time together over the past day and a half, her thoughts had been behind a wall, something he could guess at but never be sure of. Now, it was clear she was fighting some battle within herself. Her eyes made these tiny little jumps back and forth, like someone watching two armies charging at each other.

Just as he was considering asking what she was debating with herself about, she set down her cup, looked him in the eyes, and asked, "So, you want to know more about me?"

#

Yang had never been a patient person, but until today she had never had a problem with Weiss, not even when she and Ruby got into their petty arguments. Yang wasn't even sure why the heiress was here. She clearly had no interest in finding Blake, as evidenced by the fact that, whether it was calling Blake's name or asking around to see if anyone had seen her, Weiss hadn't spoken up once all weekend. The only time she did talk was to inform the rest of them how stupid they were for looking. She wasn't even turning her head to check down alleyways or scanning open areas. Yang could cover more ground by herself, especially on her motorcycle, but Weiss stuck around for whatever reason.

They had already split up with Ruby, mostly to get away from that weirdo Penny, and everything Weiss said made Yang want to divide the group further and go off on her own. The last one had stung the worst. _The innocent never run, Yang._ That was what she had said. Yang probably wouldn't have thought about it as much if she weren't so frustrated with the situation, but in her current state of mind, the words had lingered. She wondered what her mother would say to that comment, wondered if there were anything her mother _could_ say.

It didn't matter. It was all hogwash anyway, and Weiss didn't matter right now either. The search was all there was in the world right now, and if she had to seek with a hundred-ten pounds of heiress strapped to her back, then she would. She quickened her pace, forcing Weiss to speed up to match it, and though her voice was starting to grow hoarse from calling Blake's name, Yang cupped her hand to her mouth and shouted it out as loudly as ever, determined to yell enough for both her and Weiss.

#

Her Scroll had rung a few hours later. Weiss had been complaining about her feet hurting and needing food more substantial than the candy bars and energy drinks they had been running on for the past two days, and even though Yang had told her to toughen up, she too had realized that any longer without proper rest would hurt more than it helped. Then the call had come in from Ruby, saying that they'd found Blake, all of them were alright, but they had gotten into a scrap with Torchwick and the White Fang.

So much had gone through Yang's mind as she and Weiss had hurried across the city towards the docks. What would Blake say when they met her again? Ruby hadn't said much over the phone, so she had no idea whether Blake was going to come home with them or was only staying at the docks because the police were keeping them there. Then there was the matter of Weiss. The heiress hadn't said a word since Ruby had called, and Yang didn't know what to expect from her once they arrived.

As they approached the docks and the police barricade came into view, Yang halted and put a hand on Weiss's shoulder. "Whatever you say to her," she said, "be gentle, okay?"

Weiss's expression didn't change, and she shrugged off Yang's grip and continued on her way. Yang had to fight not to grit her teeth, but she fell back in line with Weiss and didn't press the issue. There were more important things to worry about right now.

They rounded a police car, and their friends came into view, seated on boxes and waiting. Yang was simultaneously so worried about what would come next that she didn't want to move while also wanting to sprint pell-mell across the lot and hug Ruby and Blake to her chest and never let go. Combined, the two desires resulted in her striding calmly towards them, each breath bearing the weight of her concern.

Ruby and Blake saw them first, both of them practically jumping to their feet. Ruby went straight for Weiss, babbling explanations, but Weiss wasn't listening, instead brushing past her to get to Blake. Yang sized up her partner. Blake was calm and composed, and Yang wasn't sure what to make of it. They all looked unhurt though, and after hearing about Torchwick and the White Fang, she supposed she couldn't ask for more than that.

"Weiss," Blake began, "I want you to know that I'm no longer associated with the White Fang. Back when I was with the…"

"Stop!" Weiss commanded. "Do you have any idea of how long we've been searching for you? Twelve hours. That means I've had twelve hours to think about this. And in that twelve hours, I've decided."

Yang felt all of them tense up, and she had to resist the urge to make fists before leaping to Blake's defense, at least until Weiss finished speaking.

"I don't care," the heiress said.

"You don't care?" Blake asked, giving voice to the same surprise that all of them were no doubt feeling.

"You said you're not one of them anymore, right?"

"No, I-I haven't been since I was younger…"

Weiss made a jabbering noise to interrupt her. "I don't want to hear it. All I want to know is that the next time something this big comes up—you'll come to your teammates, and not some…" She cut off and gave the monkey Faunus a look that, while stern, wasn't a spiteful as Yang had expected. "Someone else."

Yang smiled. Maybe Weiss deserved more credit. After all, she had a lot of bias to get over, and if she could be more accepting of Blake after just an apology and twelve hours, then she had more character than Yang had thought.

Blake turned to her and Ruby, who was smiling just as brightly. Blake's lip shook, but she wiped away the tear that was forming in her eye before it fell.

She looked back to Weiss and nodded. "Of course."

Ruby broke out grinning and cheered, "Yeah! Team RWBY is back together!"

Yang's lips parted to show her teeth as she too let the burden that had been on her mind the past few days fall away. Weiss was now saying something snippy to the monkey Faunus, and Ruby was asking about Penny, who had apparently ventured off while they were distracted, but Yang wasn't paying attention to them. She walked up to Blake, who looked at her with something resembling fear. Did she really expect Yang to denounce her after all this?

Yang reached out, her hands sliding behind Blake's ears and tangling in her hair. She found the knot of Blake's ribbon and undid it; then she pulled it away, revealing a pair of black cat ears. Blake turned her head away, those ears flattening across her head. It made her look so miserable when she did that. Yang wasn't having any of it.

"There," Yang said. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Blake's ears perked back up, and Yang scooped her into her arms, lifting her off the ground. The monkey Faunus laughed at that. Yang promised she would hug him too for keeping their friend safe, as soon as she felt she had squeezed all the affection she could into Blake.


End file.
